The Difference
by Cheloya
Summary: AU. Hojo gives Vincent one last chance to change his fate. Vincent accepts. Yuffie x Vincent.
1. Part I

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII  
Title: The Difference  
Author: Rose Flame  
Theme(s): #14 - craven, democracy, aristocrat  
Pairing/Characters: Yuffie/Vincent, Hojo, Sephiroth, Godo  
Rating: M

Warnings: AU. War. Adultery. Angst. Death. (It's not as bad as it sounds. There's also candy, and a rock collection.) Also minor loli, I guess.

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.  
Summary: Hojo gives Vincent one last chance to change everything; a chance Vincent, surprisingly, takes.

Notes: This is long. Ridiculously so. And, surprisingly, NOT inspired by the bit in the forest with the kid and the cloak! I was writing it weeks before I saw AC. I'm prescient, or something.

* * *

_Last chance, Valentine. The voice is a hoarse rasp above his head, maybe far above his head - he's too dizzy from blood loss to know where his head is any more. This is your absolute very last chance, ha ha ha, your final fantasy, before I lock you up and throw away the key._

_You think you're pretty slick, Turk, but all the brawn in the world can't beat a good, solid strategy. Sniff. Swipe at forehead. Vincent's eyes focus on the streak of startling red that has suddenly appeared amidst the strangely phosphorescent glimmer of sweat on that slightly bulbous brow. Yes, ha ha. Not so sharp now with all that mako in your blood, eh? You wait until the dreams start. You just wait._

_But here's the thing, Valentine, he says, and stops. He pushes his glasses further up his nose, and peers down at Vincent's face with scrutiny. Here's the thing. Even if I hid you in the deepest, darkest pit this miserable Planet had to offer - eventually, someone would dig you up. Ha ha. They always do, you know. That's how it works. But the interesting thing about it is, if a person makes a choice to go down into the deepest, darkest pit - well. _They_ never come back. _They_ aren't dug up five or ten or fifty years later._

_I've done some pretty interesting things with your body. You'll have a lot of time to find out about them all, if you take me up on this. It's a generous offer. You can think it over while I finish up with your thumb. Son of a bitch won't sit right. You could have mentioned that you'd broken your hand at some stage, selfish bastard. I could have put the joint for this somewhere else-_

_Vincent's vision erupts with coloured sparks and large, jagged patches of blackness as pain too severe for even the mako to deal with surges up his arm and into his brain stem. He writhes, or tries to writhe - Hojo has done a remarkable job of pinning him to the table, and his limbs and vocal chords are sluggish. The most he can manage is a kind of high-pitched exhalation in pitiful imitation of a scream._

_Hojo chuckles. Vincent's arm feels as though it's coated in jagged, molten glass. How's that, Valentine? It looks good, I must say. Very visually appealing - not what you're used to, I suppose, but aesthetic, nonetheless. His blood-slick glove comes to rest on Vincent's forehead, smoothing back his hair almost gently. Vincent, who has had to hold in his own viscera before, tries to recoil at the repulsive touch, and flops limply instead._

_Hojo's face swims far above him, smug and pitying. Vincent hates him as he says, you're beaten, Valentine. I could do anything I wanted with you, right now, but I'd rather avoid anything too gruesome. 'Crecia loves you so, after all, naïve and childish as you are._

_Vincent cannot speak; he snarls instead. Hojo laughs his intolerable laugh and strokes gore-coated fingers through Vincent's hair. He clenches them, the difference of the minor pain allowing Vincent a moment of lucidity, a moment of focus._

_I want you to go away, Valentine. Disappear. I don't care how. Back to that little shit-hole island of yours for all I care. But disappear, and do it tonight._

_Vincent cannot speak, but his lips form the words anyway. Hojo is watching him closely enough. He knows what Vincent will say. Lucrecia. I promised Lucrecia._

_Hojo's eyes are cold and bright and heartbroken as he says, Lucrecia is going to die, you idiot. She was always going to die. She knows she can't make it as far as Gast can, but she's made sure she's the one who'll be remembered in this project. She'll be the martyr who allowed all this. So. So don't you tell me about 'Crecia. He closes his eyes and two fat tears leak from beneath his eyelids._

_Vincent wants to scream. You're lying, you're lying, you _made_ her sick, _you made her_, but against everything he wants to believe he is struck with the inescapable hammer blow: Hojo is telling the truth._

_Disappear, Vincent, before you make her regret her decision. There's no way back for her now._

_Vincent chokes on tears and cannot reply, but by the time Hojo feeds the right stimulants into his bloodstream to get him up and moving, he's made up his mind; he's leaving. He's doing what he swore he'd never do._

_He's breaking his promises. He's running away._

* * *

"Hello!"

They stare at each other. She is surprised and a little awed to find someone living all by himself in the middle of the forest, especially in such a funny little house. He is astonished that a grubby little girl-child, five years old at most, has ventured so deep into the forest when not even adult Wutaians had noticed his presence.

Fifteen years, he's been here, and he hasn't aged a day. He hates to think of the horrors Hojo _spared_ him.

Her hands are caught up at the neck of her tiny cotton robe, as though seized by a sudden shyness the rest of her pays no heed. "Do you live here?" She sounds impressed.

Vincent nods slowly, still staring, still sitting dazedly in the sun. He should return her to the village, but that would mean that they would learn of his existence. He couldn't just kill her; her parents would search the entire forest to find the body, and the creature who had murdered their child. Perhaps if he waited, she would find her own way back to the village.

"Wow... what a neat house. Did you build it all by yourself, mister?" She trots closer, trying to peer inside. It isn't hard - the dilapidated hut has no door. Despite the fact the girl probably can't lace her sandals, Vincent feels somewhat ashamed of his lack of architectural skill. He had always been awed by the artistry of Wutaian structures. The child apparently prefers his lopsided creation. "This place is super-cool, mister. When I grow up, I wanna live in a cubby house."

Vincent is wordless. The child laughs at what is probably an expression of stunned disbelief, doubling over and holding her small pot of a belly. When she straightens, a wide and gap-toothed grin is directed at him.

"I'm Yuffie. What's your name, mister?"

"I… I am called Vincent." He is so surprised by her daring, he finds himself answering without conscious thought. She screws up her face and mumbles it a few times as though trying to fix it in her memory.

"Okay, Vincent. You wanna play with me?"

Vincent looks down at this scrap of a girl and is strangely glad that she has not seen his misshapen arm yet. "Shouldn't you head home? It's getting late."

To his surprise, Yuffie flings her head back and stares thoughtfully at the sky for a few moments. She lets out a long noise of sullen agreement. "…I guess. It took me a while to get here. It'll be dark by the time I get back."

She dithers a moment, stretching stubby toes as far as they'll go, out over the soles of her sandals and digging at the dirt with them. "Can I come play with you tomorrow?"

Vincent eyes her carefully, and shrugs. "If you can find me again."

Her eyes brighten to the point they seem to shine. Vincent notes absently that pot-metal grey is a rather odd eye colour. "Yaaaaaay! I'll come back nice and early this time. I won't even stop for a _swim_," she adds insistently, as though he has voiced doubts about her sincerity.

"But this has to be our secret," Vincent cautions, struck by a sudden thought. "You can't tell anyone about me."

The idea seems to strike Yuffie's fancy. "You can be Yuffie's special friend," she decides magnanimously. "Like Shake's invisible dinosaur that no one else can see. Okay, Vincent! I'll come back tomorrow!"

And with that, she's gone, off into the forest like she's the daughter of the wind. A particularly small and scruffy daughter of the wind, Vincent amends in his head. She won't find her way back - it's been fifteen years since he last saw a human. He doesn't expect to see the same one on successive days.

* * *

He wakes from disturbed slumber to the patter of tiny feet on moist earth.

"Hey! Vincent!"

He stares at the awkwardly placed boughs and leaves that form his ceiling and blinks sleepily. He wonders if he's imagining things, if he's finally snapped and the girl is just something he's created because he has been so miserably alone.

"Vincent! You meanie, you promised you'd play with me! You'd better come out here, or-hey, whatsamatter, Vincent? Are you sick?"

She's standing at the door, tugging at the straps of her worn sandals as though to remove them before walking inside. Vincent almost chuckles. He does sit up. "No. Just lazy."

Yuffie giggles. "Pops says I am, too. We're the same! Are you gonna come play with me now?"

Vincent eyes the girl and her sodden robe, and remembers how to quirk a smile. "Mmm, I'm not sure. You said you wouldn't go swimming..."

Yuffie looks horrified and insulted and puffs out her little cheeks with righteous fury. "I _didn't_ go swimming! It _rained!_ You can even come see, it's still cloudy n' wet!" She adds defensively, pointing to the bright, but less than usual, day that silhouettes her in his doorframe. Vincent finds the second smile a little easier than the first as he comes to stand beside her and peer distrustfully out at the day.

"Hmm, you're right. Very well. What would you like to do?"

He realises several minutes later, when he's hanging onto her foot with his one good hand and telling her sternly that she is not to climb any higher, she'll break her neck, that this was the wrong thing to ask.

Fortunately, Yuffie is distracted by the appearance of his claw, and has a whole host of questions about what he can do with it. Most involve what he's sure constitutes cruelty to fiends.

They spend the day getting all the sap that had oozed all over him out of the shirt, and out of his claw joints, and Yuffie scampers off for home with green and yellow bark stains all over her knees.

Vincent sinks onto his futon with a weary disbelief that anyone could even _consider_ having children, and is asleep before he can think more than that.

* * *

He is waiting for her long before she arrives. When she does turn up, she is soaking wet and sullen and shivering. She stares at him grumpily, mud halfway up her calves, and says, "Lost my shoe. Big yucky lizard _stole_ it."

Vincent's expression is amused, but otherwise unreadable. "I take it you went swimming today." She glares at him, but she's far too young for the expression to be anything but comical.

"I _tried_ to," she grates out, "But I couldn't catch any fish, and then when I went to get my shoes there was this big nasty lizard and it _hissed_ at me, and." And she stops suddenly, scowling viciously. Vincent is mildly concerned by this. It looks painful. Finally, Yuffie explodes with, "And I _wasn't_ scared. At all. _So there._"

Vincent bites his lip against the sudden, alien urge to smile. "What a terrible lizard. Will your father be angry that you've lost your shoe?"

Yuffie turns slowly redder and redder as she mumbles something that might, with a little imagination, have been an affirmative. Vincent feels for the little girl's independence and pride. "Lizards don't need shoes, but I think Yuffies might," he says thoughtfully. "We should go and get your shoe back."

Yuffie stares at him for a moment, eyes huge and horrified and tear-filled, and she looks down and mutters something about the shoe not being 'portant. Vincent shrugs and tells her to come and sit in the sun 'til she's dry and they can chip all the mud off her legs. She is absorbed in the task until she discovers a lady beetle crawling over her toes, and that is the end of the peace and quiet.

Vincent eventually swings her up onto his shoulders and goes crashing through the forest on her imperious directions to take their reptilian enemy's stronghold. When they reach the part of the small stream that widens and calms into a shallow pond, Yuffie's shoe is sitting alone and abandoned on a large, flat rock. Vincent, casting a surreptitious glance at the canopy, surmises that the creature had merely been sunning itself, and could not have been less interested in ingesting either the girl or her tough and stringy sandal.

He puts her down so he can tie it for her properly, but the moment she hits the ground, she's tugging at the other one and crashing into the water, immediately frightening away every last one of the fish she was apparently hoping to catch. Vincent sits down on a rock to guard her from lizards, and offers occasional suggestions on the finer points of fishing, which she ignores completely, because she's done this before and of course that means she knows _best_.

Eventually she patters up the bank, sopping wet and muddied again, but grinning because she _touched_ one and that was what counted, and he puts her shoes back on. He has to have her hold one of the laces, because his claw's too sharp for the delicate procedure and in any case, he wants it nowhere near her skin. When he's done, he straightens and points her in the direction of Wutai.

"Home," he tells her firmly. "Or you'll get sick and your father will have reason to call you lazy."

Yuffie nods and hugs his leg, wet and warm and slightly squishy. Her short cap of hair is an utter mess, and he is sure her mother will be horrified. His own certainly would have been. She dashes off into the undergrowth.

Vincent turns in the opposite direction and heads for home, wondering with a strange exhilaration whether she'll come back tomorrow.

* * *

Vincent's days pass in blurred colour, his evenings in slow contemplation, and his nights in the barest blink of an eye. Keeping Yuffie occupied exhausts him.

He often wonders why he puts up with her; why he doesn't just do something so horrifying and cruel that it will frighten her away for ever. Certainly it would make some days easier. Certainly he has done such things before.

He thinks he could live without the days watching with heart in throat as she scrambles and slips all the way to the top of the monstrous pines, and the days where she practises holding her breath in the too-fast-moving stream, and the days where she falls and he's just too far away to catch her and she cries, hiccupping and gasping for what seems like hours while he holds her close and tender and he _doesn't know what to do._

He could live without those days.

He thinks.

Her visits to him wane, as she grows older. A six year old has more to do than a five-year-old does; she learns to write and count and tie knots - Vincent isn't sure where _that_ is leading. She visits only once or twice a week, for she's still small, and it's a long way from the village to his ramshackle hut in the middle of nowhere. It takes a whole day. She arrives late and leaves early, so she doesn't have to walk in the dark.

Some days she forgets, and Vincent walks part of the way with her, carrying her quickly on his vastly longer legs. He always stops well before the village, though, and cautions her to mention him to no one. She's old enough now that she makes faces while he's talking and smiles brightly, innocently, when he stares at her suspiciously. She makes her promises, and she hugs him - whether he wants one or no (and it's usually no) - and she dashes off, with her pockets filled with leaking berries or pretty rocks.

She has a line of these; it's her collection. She told him once that all houses needed fences, and rock gardens, and since then she has been stubbornly placing interesting pebbles in the ever-growing outline of a circle all around his house.

She seems to think some of the rocks don't get along; she moves them around a lot.

He thinks he could do without those days, but he never, never tries to sweep the pebbles from their arc.

* * *

Wutai often has festivals, to celebrate gods, or men, or women, or trees. It's a different world to the one Vincent spent most of his working life in, and he finds it difficult to understand how one tiny little village could possibly find so much to celebrate in a year.

Today, when the wind gusts just right, he can hear music and laughter, and knows it is a festival day. Yuffie will not be coming.

He sets about his usual routine - or what used to be his usual routine, before a certain scrap of a princess began calling on a near-daily basis. He checks his rations. He checks the sturdiness of his dubious shelter. He hangs his ragged blankets out to air; the very last thing he wants is lice. He'd have to burn the whole place and start again. And shave his head, which he has never fancied, not even when he'd been fond of that band with the patchwork clothing.

Yuffie would probably laugh at him. He wonders if this would be better, or worse, than her frequent requests to do strange things with the hair that he has. He blames her mother.

He walks for hours and gathers enough dry wood to cook on for that night, setting aside enough that he can cook tomorrow night if it rains. It shouldn't.

It is after lunchtime when he hears twigs snapping in the forest at his back, and turns to regard it with weary suspicion. He is pleasantly surprised when Yuffie emerges, elaborately dressed and treading with exaggerated patience in fancy shoes. Vincent's memory of festival days is short and hazy, but he recalls the ones he was forced to attend, and he recalls those he was, as a child, glad to miss. He was glad to be seven, and not five, or three (1) - boys didn't have to dress up when they were seven.

From the expression on her face, Yuffie probably wishes she were still five. She has torn ornaments from her hair, though she appears reluctant to actually do away with them completely. (Vincent supposes she has been warned about the consequences of this.) She looks up at him and her grumpy expression morphs into a bashful smile.

"The temple gave me candy," she says by way of greeting. A younger Vincent would have agreed that that was the important thing.

"You look very beautiful, Yuffie." He tells her, truthfully. Duty compels him to add, "Shouldn't you still be _at_ the temple?" She barely squirms as she shakes her head.

"I hate temples," she declares. "You want some _chitose-ame_?"

Vincent shakes his head in exasperation. She will argue determinedly for hours over who gets the last berry, but she comes out of her way on a festival day to offer him candy. _Good_ candy, if Vincent remembers correctly. "That's a special sweet. You're seven - you need to eat the temple's candy. It's been blessed." Vincent doesn't need its long-life implications, after all.

Yuffie shrugs and goes to sit on her favourite piece of firewood. Vincent had harvested it months ago for use in the winter months, but Yuffie thought it looked like some creature from a story, and had begged him to keep it. She reaches into her little cloth bag and makes a valiant effort at shoving a whole stick of _chitose-ame_ into her mouth at once.

"Mm nighrl yht gnewyl," she says, incoherently. Vincent tells her not to speak with her mouth full, and regrets it almost immediately as she spits the half-chewed sweet out into her hand. Vincent's eyes fix in mild horror on the sticky mess oozing slowly down her sleeve as she repeats, "I'm nearly eight, anyway."

"Eight-year olds do not spit food out into their hands." Vincent mutters pointedly. The sarcasm is cheerfully lost on Yuffie.

"I've got to _eat_ it, Vincent." She tells him painstakingly. "I can't spit it into the dirt."

Vincent ruffles her already destroyed hair tiredly, indescribably content. "No, I suppose you can't. Finish up, then." She starts to suck the blessed sweet off her hand, the other still holding onto her hair ornaments. They are orange and amber butterflies, strung together onto clips. Vincent has seen Yuffie chasing similar creatures enough to know that they are her favourite. "Did your mother buy those for you?"

Yuffie nods enthusiastically, her mouth full. "She said I was the prettiest girl in Wutai," she manages around the _chitose-ame_, "But that's silly. Mama's the prettiest. Shake says I look like a _boy_."

Vincent has heard a great deal (scathingly) about Shake, and thinks that she and Yuffie could probably be great friends, if they weren't both so determined to be better than each other. At everything.

More likely, he reflects, they _are_ great friends, though neither of them know it, and will continue to be so long into Yuffie's rule, no matter what Shake tells Yuffie she looks like.

"Not at all, Yuffie. No boy would wear that robe so."

This is true. It hangs unevenly from her left shoulder, causing part of the hem to drag in the dust. Vincent is sure that all the hen-pecked five-year-olds of the village are too terrified at the thought of their mothers' reactions to ever wear a kimono in such a way.

She grins at him, candy in her teeth, and puffs out her chest proudly. "I am a princess, y'know," she tells him airily. Vincent pats her head again, and glances up at the sky.

"Princesses should be home before sundown," he reminds her. "And you probably should have left a little while ago to do that, especially on festival day." It's coming into winter, after all, and the days are getting shorter. "Come, princess. I'll walk you home, today."

"Yaaaay!" Yuffie carols, as though this has been her intent all along. "Give me a pony ride? These shoes hurt." She looks up at him pitifully, as though her mere request is not enough. He sighs and crouches so that she can fling herself onto his back and half-strangle him with enthusiasm. "Go, Vinnie, go!"

Vincent goes. Shortly, when the amber butterflies tumble from her grasp into the leaf litter, he finds that Yuffie has lost her 'go' in the excitement of the day - she's fallen asleep on his shoulders. Cautiously, he shifts her with his arm and the back of his claw until she is nestled almost comfortably in the crook of his left arm, held in place with his right. He begins to fret, but continues to walk. Perhaps she will have woken by the time they arrive in the village.

* * *

He stands in the shadow of the trees, staring down at the face of a seven-year-old girl, and wonders how it is possible that he cannot bring himself to wake her, even though she has drooled sugary candy-saliva all over his collar. (He is sure he has killed for lesser trangressions.)

He has been standing in the trees for some time. He has begun to worry that someone will notice him soon. But it is still festival day, and Wutai has more pressing things to attend to than a misplaced splash of crimson in the trees.

Soon it will be completely dark, and they'll trickle slowly from the bonfire in the lower village back to their homes. Vincent glances down toward the blaze, as though thought will summon them faster.

He creeps forward a few steps, testing the smoothness of his stride. Clutching Yuffie close, he chances a dash across the courtyard, metal shoes clanking on the cobblestones. Vincent crouches carefully and awkwardly to lay her on her porch, unwilling to mount the stairs. She stirs, but does not wake, the _chitose-ame_ in its decorated bag slipping from her fingers with a muffled clatter.

Though his eyes had been upon her soft features, pink lips curved in a smile he can rather helplessly only term 'adorable', the sound startles him from his trance. He cannot linger here, but she will be safe enough. There is not a person in Wutai who will dare to harm one hair on her head.

As though to spur him on, he hears footsteps and laughter approaching the _torii_ at the edge of the courtyard. He freezes a split-second, staring at the red gate, and at the sight of a pale, beautiful face ascending the stairs, backlit by a fiery sunset, he turns tail and runs.

For hours afterward, he paces and frets, certain the Lady Wutai has seen him. But when the long night at last begins to give way to dawn and no shinobi have emerged from the forest dark to claim his head, he stretches out on his futon and falls into uneasy slumber, his fears not quite allayed.

* * *

For the next five days, Yuffie does not visit. Vincent spends his days performing the tasks he has set himself, flawlessly and listlessly, as though his body got up and set to work in the mornings without the aid of his soul. He sleeps badly, and his limbs have an odd heaviness to them when he moves. He remembers years of this feeling, and hopes it will not linger.

On the sixth day, when the clouds coiled overhead make it dark despite the lateness of the hour, he is sitting on his doorstep, whittling a stick into a makeshift spear with his claw. His hair is in his eyes and mouth, and he is sure it is the fact that he looks like an evil haystack that startles the giggle out of Yuffie.

His head shoots up at once, catching her eye with some surprise. "Yuffie. Welcome back." She is too young, too young to hear the disbelief, the relief, in his voice. He recognises it, and feels something sickly curl in the pit of his stomach, curdled and cold.

She grins and tilts her head at him, then proffers the wrapped box held in her stick-like arms. "Mama said to tell my friend, be sure to try the egg rolls," she recites obediently, hastening to add, "Mama makes the best egg rolls... but she makes her nori funny."

Yuffie plonks the box in his arms, cuddles him happily, and then drags over her favourite log to sit on while Vincent carefully unwraps and opens the box, and blinks at the red and purple nori, and the smiling faces carved into the sliced bamboo shoots. Evidently, the Lady Wutai has passed her _interesting_ personality along to her daughter.

Also, rolled carefully alongside the egg rolls, on yellowed paper with a purple ribbon, is a note to "Yuffie-chan's Mr Invisible". Vincent slips it discreetly into his pocket while pretending to enjoy a purple-weed-and-tuna nori roll. (The purple weed is textured strangely, and slightly bitter on his tongue. He suspects this is some painful derivative of green tea, or the ridiculous frilly lettuce that has _never_ tasted better than the plain iceberg, no matter what certain Midgar restaurants might like to think.) Yuffie tells him how busy she's been for the last few days; her birthday's coming up soon.

He thinks she has thrown that statement at him roughly thirty times in the past hour. He wonders what she expects, when he has no money, but some part of his mind steels himself in preparation for a task he will complete to her satisfaction, no matter the trials.

Thunder rumbles across the skies, and Vincent makes Yuffie promise to be careful if it starts to rain. Yuffie replies smartly that she likes the rain better, anyway, and sets off for her home, carrying her sandals and the box, the furoshiki tied haphazardly around her head in imitation of his bandanna.

* * *

_Mr Invisible,_

_Allow me to extend my gratitude to you, for returning my daughter safely to me on a most tiring day, and also for the friendship you show her._

_Yuffie gives me to understand that you are very kind to her, and spend much of your time with her. This is very much appreciated. Though she may not mention it to you, my Yuffie has always been a lonely child. There are few children her age in the village, and it has been hard on her. Nevertheless, as I am sure you have noticed, she can be quite precocious!_

_I hope you will continue to watch over her, and lend her your friendship and assistance. You need not fear Wutai's retribution; rather, expect our gratitude. We will support you in any small way that we are able._

_I fear I must warn you, however, that all is not well between Wutai and Shinra, Inc., whose headquarters are far to the west in Midgar. It is not impossible that hostilities will continue to escalate. I will do my utmost to keep you informed, so that you, too, may be kept safe in these troubled times._

_Yours in gratitude,_

_Kisaragi Michiko_

_P.S. Yuffie is quite fond of the white cranes that visit our garden in the spring._

* * *

Vincent has no wrapping paper; he has had to make do with leaves. He thinks it may have been more frustrating to wrap than it was to make - and given that he worked on it by the bare light of a tiny fire, carefully bringing out its form in tiny shaving motions with his claw, this is no small statement.

It is strangely shaped, and looks odd beneath the cover of the massive burgundy-and-lime leaves, but Vincent is satisfied. He hopes that Yuffie will like it.

Yuffie does not visit on her birthday, and he tells himself that this is only natural. He spends the day lost in memories, reawakened by Lady Kisaragi's letter, and replaces his wrappings absent-mindedly when they brown and begin to fall apart.

Several hours after the sun has set, it begins to rain. Vincent wets the leaves in the hope that they will live a little longer and falls asleep thinking of Lucrecia and the fond, amused way she had looked at him over her wire-rimmed glasses, small curls of hair drifting down in front of her eyes.

He wakes to Yuffie standing over him, eyes wide and interested. "You wouldn't even wake up when I knocked." Her voice is a curious mixture of concern and distaste. "You were having a dream, I think." Vincent blinks at her, bleary-eyed. He raises an arm to point to the misshapen mass of soggy, brown leaf-matter sitting on the flat stone area that can loosely be called a table.

"There's your present," he says without preamble, and watches her face change. Glee shines from every pore, and she rips into the leaves with barely a thankyou in sight. (Vincent reflects mournfully that it took him _hours_ to get those leaves to sit right, and now they are nothing but moist shreds all over his living space.) Her small sound of strangled delight makes him sit up hastily, trying to catch her expression.

Soft-featured and round-eyed, she traces her fingers along the wings of the crane, carved from the palest wood Vincent could find on such short notice. It really had been a miracle, to locate a large enough, dry enough chunk of wood in time, and that he had managed to carve it to his satisfaction. The sense of relief upon completion had been strange, almost alien to him. He could hardly recall a time when such a small thing had meant so much to him.

It is as though all he strives for is the happiness of this girl.

"Vinnie... beautiful... it's so beautiful! Did you make it?" She turns to him, crane clutched to her chest. The pointed tip of its wing leaves a red mark as it scrapes along her arm, but she doesn't seem to notice it. "Thankyou so much, Vinnie! How did you know cranes were my favourite?" She is beaming at him, clouded eyes shining. The silver lining.

"Yes. You are welcome. Your mother mentioned it in passing." He tells her, and runs his hand through his hair to settle it. Yuffie leaps at him and seizes him around the stomach, the crane still in her arms - it digs sharply into his hip, but he pats her head and bears it. "Did you have fun?"

Yuffie pulls back and nods at him enthusiastically. "Yep, it was great. We had all sorts of things. I even brought you cake! And _look_," she adds excitedly, digging her fingers into her pockets - she no longer wears yukata. Shorts are far more practical for climbing trees, and Yuffie does plenty of that - particularly in the spring, when she arrives late in the day, pre-tousled and stained all over with the juice of berries. (And, occasionally, vomit, where she has tried to eat the unripe ones, too. She never seems to learn.)

His thoughts are interrupted when a small golden glowing stone the size and shape of a marble is held up before his nose. "Pops gave me a Throw materia!"

Vincent stares at what he considers - even as a Turk, who avoided the use of materia - to be the most useless of them all. "And an armlet to put it on, I see." He gestures to the crude pot metal thing clamped around her bicep. "But who are you fighting? Who are you training against?"

Yuffie grins and puts up her fists, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Mama's training me! And Gorky and Staniv and Chekhov and Pops and Shake. I'm gonna be the best ninja _ever_, Vinnie, you wait and see! Not even the Shinra'll be able to beat me."

Shinra, again, Vincent thinks, a sense of foreboding rising within him. "I'm sure you will. You have always been extremely stubborn." Yuffie's grin only widens, as though this is a compliment. "Shall we have some of that cake?"

Yuffie is only too happy to oblige, but the wooden crane never leaves her side. In a small wooden box wedged in the side of Yuffie's bento, Vincent finds a bone comb and another note from Kisaragi Michiko, telling him in brief but spirited bursts about the deteriorating friendship between Wutai and the western electrics company that will never be satisfied with what it has.

* * *

It takes years.

Years of thinly veiled hostilities over trade routes and methods, in quasi-polite political discussion between Lord Godo and President Shinra.

Years of forced calm in odd, loopy handwriting; short, discouraging missives from the Lady of Wutai to a red-cloaked hermit in the western forest near the mountains on the border of her lands.

Years of the heir to the Wutaian throne walking miles to reach her best friend, to while away the hours when her parents and retainers have no time for her, even to teach her what they are doing, and why.

It takes years, but eventually war is declared.

Wutai never stood a chance.

* * *

The first of the hostilities that Vincent is personally witness to, is when twelve SOLDIERS stumble into his clearing early one morning. They hold him at gunpoint until the nearest one notices that his eyes are red and bloody, and stumbles backward into a pit dug for this very purpose. Vincent has not declared loyalty to Wutai outright, but he is damned if he will go back to Shinra knowing what they are willing to do in the name of 'advancement'.

Three others gather around the pit to try and haul their fellow out, while the leader of the squad - a stern-looking soldier with short-cropped yellow hair - tries to speak with Vincent. He asks questions that, in Vincent's opinion, are utterly foolish. No Turk would speak so. His pride takes a hit; _we used to be better than this_.

Vincent is glad of his claw; moreso of the handgun and ammunition he has kept in good working order despite the years. Some things do not change.

Some things do. At the precisely worded insistence of Michiko, there is a Shield and a Restore materia in the single slot of the Scorpion.

"I am loyal to no one. I wish to be left alone." He fixes the captain with a steely glare, and has the strange, fizzing pleasure of seeing the man's pupils contract with fear. "I am willing to fight for that privilege, as you see. Allow me to assure you, you will not come out on top."

One of the younger SOLDIERS, already sweating if the nervous way he grips his gun is any indication, sneers. "Do you think you can hold back the entire Shinra army?"

Vincent's own sneer is far more impressive. "Any army stupid enough to put themselves between the warriors of Wutai and the dragon-infested mountains to the west needs no _holding back_."

Silence greets this. The captain turns slowly red. "General Sephiroth would never give a foolish order to his SOLDIERS."

_Sephiroth._

Lucrecia had picked that name only weeks into the pregnancy. The sound of it pleased her, its connotations - as far as she had been concerned, it was perfect.

Vincent closes his eyes for a moment to steady himself.

"Your general, I have heard, is a tactical genius. I can only assume this order was not his. Leave, or I will prove to you just how foolish it was."

The captain glowers sullenly, but the bloodstained witchlight in Vincent's eyes makes his mind up for him in the end. They turn and march away, but Vincent knows no immediate relief. He resets the trap, checks on the locations of the dozens of others littered about the region, and knows that this will not be the last that he sees of this war.

* * *

Once a week, Yuffie brings terse missives from her mother, lunch, and her own woes. The bridges to the south have been burned; Wutai is completely cut off from the outside world, with Shinra's speedier ships lurking like hungry sharks at the mouth of the Leviathan. Wutai has no income, with its barges and fishing ships lying idle on the riverbanks.

Godo and Michiko lead their small country with determination, and try to reassure their small daughter, but even Yuffie sometimes has doubts. She cannot sleep properly at nights; he knows because at least once a month, she falls asleep in his comforting embrace. It breaks his heart each time he is forced to wake her to her harsh reality, each time he must send her running back into the jaws of the war.

He has begun carving cranes. On her tenth birthday, he has a little over eight hundred. She has placed the larger ones like pale, fragile guardians around the thick, colourful circle that makes up her rock collection. (Once, he suggested she add her small collection of materia to this. He believes her eyes nearly popped out of her skull.) He hopes that by her eleventh, he will have the fabled thousand required to make her wish come true.

She longs for an end to the war.

Ironically, it is on the night when he completes his nine hundred and ninety-ninth crane that an explosion rocks the ground beneath him, and he rushes outside to see a pillar of smoke and flame against the sky.

* * *

Vincent stands frozen for perhaps thirty seconds, trying, somewhere in his mind where he's still lucid, to calm his raging heartbeat. He breathes so hard and fast, he is hurting his throat, but he doesn't notice now - he will notice later, when the exhaustion sets in, and he is finally forced to rest.

Right now, numb fingers grasp the Scorpion and haul it from its holster. He holds it by his side as he charges through the trees, claw extended to ward off the more determined bits of shrubbery. He does not try for silence; he does not particularly care who can hear him. His only real concern right now - and it is generous to call it concern, when he barely knows what he is doing, when he is acting on instinct and whim - is Yuffie.

It is a miracle, he realises, when he encounters Michiko, bloodstained and exhausted, hauling her daughter through the trees. A miracle she does not immediately let fly with her fan-like weapon, and a miracle he has not fired three shots, one to kill, two out of sheer panic before her body hits the ground.

They both pause. Vincent's heavy breathing must say it all, for Kisaragi Michiko smiles at him, and puts up the fan.

"Sephiroth is coming," she tells him mildly, completely oblivious to the blood streaming down the side of her face. She strokes her free hand over her shivering, silently crying daughter's head, and looks down at her with great affection. Though he has seen her only once before, Vincent can see the tears rising in a painful wave through her body, before they force themselves out her eyes.

"Yuffie-chan," she murmurs softly. "Will you go with Mr Invisible, please?" Yuffie shakes her head miserably, clinging to her mother's leg. Michiko sighs, not impatiently. "Yuffie-chan, it's very important to me that you are safe."

Vincent has seen enough last goodbyes to know that this is a poor one, and there is nothing that will change it.

"Yuffie, come with me." He says, and feels his heart shatter as she looks at him, lost and hopeless, furious and frightened, and filled with that indefinable Yuffie-ness that simply screams, _you will not beat me_. "Your mother needs to concentrate completely on the battle ahead. She cannot do that if she is worrying about you. The best thing you can do for her, is to come with me."

Yuffie looks as though she is about to argue his harsh words, but Michiko shoots to her feet, listening intently. She raises her fan again, and pulls Yuffie around her body so that the girl is between Vincent and herself.

"Yuffie. Go. They are coming." She squeezes her daughter's hand one last time. "Do everything that Mr Invisible tells you."

Yuffie backs away a few steps, breathing in gasps as though this will help her stop the tears. "O-o-okay. Okay. I love you, Mama. I love you."

Vincent sees the strength in Michiko's shoulders as she prepares herself for the even, mechanical footsteps that are coming through the trees. He can hear the whistle of a well-honed blade.

"I love you, my precious Yuffie. Hurry, Mr Invisible."

Vincent catches Yuffie with his claw; he may yet need his gun. "Be my eyes," he whispers into her hair. "Watch behind us." And to her mother, "It's Vincent."

Michiko nods, though she does not turn her gaze from the trees before her. "Take care of my Yuffie, Vincent, and do all you can for her."

"Be my eyes," he tells Yuffie again as he turns to run away again, and reflects that he never needed to be asked.

* * *

He arrives at his tiny hut with his throat burning, though in truth he is barely out of breath. It is the ache of sorrow, not of exhaustion, that eats away at his reserve, and despair at the little girl, _she's still such a very little girl_, crying silently into his collarbone.

To her very great credit, her eyes are still firmly fixed on the forest behind him.

He swings her down inside the door of the hut, leads her to the corner that houses his futon and covers her with blankets. "Stay here, and be quiet."

She wraps her hands about his claw, grey eyes pleading with him. "Vinnie. Vinnie, I'm scared. I'm scared. I want you to stay with me. I need you to stay. Vinnie, please, Vincent, please, please, pleasepleaseplease..." Her voice breaks and she's left with naught but a high-pitched whisper as the tears track down her face. Vincent wishes he could do as she asks. He pulls her forward abruptly into a fierce embrace; the second true and desperate thing he has allowed himself today, and for the last two decades.

"Yuffie, Yuffie," he says gruffly into her hair. "I will come back. I will always come back. I swear it. I swear it to you, Kisaragi Yuffie."

Yuffie's tiny shoulders shake. "Do you _promise?_" She whispers, and Vincent lets out a startled bark of a laugh.

"I do, Yuffie. I promise. I will always come back to you." He rubs her back for one second, two seconds, long seconds leading ever closer to the end of their lives. He grits his teeth. "Yuffie, you must be as quiet as you can. Sephiroth will be heading this way, I am sure. I was... careless, when I came for you."

Yuffie pulls her knees up to her chest. Tears are still leaking down her cheeks, but her jaw is clenched in the stubborn expression he knows so well by now. "I'm quiet and quick," she mutters. Vincent cautions her to stay put, no matter what, and casts the highest level Shield spell he can muster from an old and unmastered materia. He wishes now that he had taken more care of it, but he never needed look out for others when he was a Turk. They never mattered enough.

She matters.

He grasps the Scorpion firmly in his right hand, balances the materia carefully on the palm of his claw, and strides outside. He wishes vaguely and with mild hysteria that he had a door to lock and bolt, and sits down on Yuffie's log to wait.

It is not long before he hears the measured tread of heavy boots, sounding no different than they had in the forest less than an hour ago. No fatigue shows in the even pace, and as a man with flowing silver for hair and emeralds for eyes steps from the trees, Vincent is reminded of ancient Wutaian gods. The man's gorgeously sculpted sword is five feet long from hilt to tip. It must weight thirty kilograms. Vincent finds himself grudgingly impressed. He senses that the striking man is undergoing a similar assessment of Vincent himself.

"And you, I imagine, are General Sephiroth."

Four other SOLDIERS skid into the clearing, and Vincent recognises the second as the yellow-haired man he had spoken to at the start of all this nonsense. Evidently the SOLDIER recognises him, as well, for his eyes narrow. He starts forward. Sephiroth makes a short swipe with the excessive blade that displays his mastery of it, and stops the SOLDIER in his tracks.

"Stay where you are, Matthews. The clearing is filled with pits."

Vincent counts himself doubly impressed, but knows he would be disappointed with less. "To what do I owe this... honour. I suppose."

Sephiroth's eyes narrow, considering. Vincent notes snake-like pupils, and wonders what flashed through Lucrecia's mind when she gave birth to this... 'human' does not seem to apply; 'creature' is a word he is reluctant to use.

He is so young, yet. Her experiment must have been so successful, she must have been so proud in her last moments. He wishes she had been there to see it. He is such a terrible coward.

_Not the time to think on this, Valentine._

"Kisaragi Yuffie is in this house."

Vincent's cold-eyed gaze does not falter in the slightest. "Is that so...?" He stands, needing no hand-to-ground to attain perfect balance. The Scorpion is a reassuring weight in his hand. "This house and all in it are mine. I warned Matthews of this, when first we met. Evidently he has already forgotten his comrade's more humiliating lesson."

Matthews glowers, but heeds his General's order; he does not move a muscle.

Sephiroth's eyes bore into Vincent's, indifferent to the childish taunt. "Kisaragi Michiko is dead." He smirks at the stifled, but not quite soft enough sob from inside Vincent's hut. Vincent pumps a round into the chamber of the Scorpion, but makes no other move. "There is no reason for her daughter to die when her husband has already surrendered."

Vincent's eyes narrow, calculating. _It might just be possible…_

"We will take her back to Wutai, and return her to her father," Sephiroth continues. "There is no reason to fuel his ire. Kisaragi Godo was a formidable opponent… and I have no desire to repeat this foolishness. Give the girl to me."

Vincent makes a derisive sound and tosses his head. "I'll return her myself. What reason have I to trust you?"

Sephiroth's eyes burn cold fire. "What reason have we to trust you?"

Somewhere deep in Vincent's mind, something trembles at the sight of those eyes and the sound of that voice. But his hand is steady on the gun. He knows what he must do.

With three precise shots, he takes down Matthews and two of the SOLDIERs that had followed Sephiroth out of the woods. The last dodges Vincent's next two bullets, shooting at the red-cloaked man, but Vincent, too, has darted into motion. The last SOLDIER goes down with Vincent's claw buried in his gut, screaming and twitching as his eyes mist slowly over.

Vincent looks up at Sephiroth, who looks completely unafraid, but interested.

"I will return her myself," he says again. He strides into his house, and kneels by the shaking and gasping Yuffie, who now knows that her beloved mother is dead. Vincent picks her up, cradles her with his true arm and, for a few brief moments, allows himself to holster his gun, to kiss her hair and whisper to her that it will be all right in the end, it will all come right in the end. He tells her that she must be strong, she must be so strong, just like her mother would have been, would have wanted her to be.

He shifts her to his claw, the gore sticking to her skin. She squirms, uncomfortable, at the rapidly cooling trickle down her leg, but does not flinch more than that. Vincent is glad. It will not do to face Sephiroth without his primary weapon. He needs his gun hand.

He plucks her favourite, the tiniest crane, from his 'hearth', and she latches onto it frantically, breathing hard. Vincent settles her against his hip and takes the Scorpion in hand again, reloading it as he steps outside into the clearing.

Sephiroth is waiting. He has even sheathed his sword. To Vincent's surprise, Yuffie's every muscle tenses against his arm. The general's eyes focus briefly on the girl. They do not soften in the slightest.

"Make haste, then." He turns and stalks into the trees.

Vincent holds Yuffie close, taking the risk of fending off branches with his gun-hand so that she isn't prodded or scratched. She is still trembling, but her breathing is strong and clear. "Yuffie? What is it?"

Her hands clench in his collar. "Mama's scale. He's wearing the Scale of Leviathan." He has never heard her voice so furious, not in all his years, where she has raved about the unfairness of so many things, and thrown things at him for daring to agree with her imagined foes. His heart clenches at the thought of Yuffie, little Yuffie, speaking with such hatred in her voice. He bows his head closer to her, as though trying to protect her from herself.

"We will see if you can have it back."

Yuffie's grip on his collar does not loosen.

It takes a little over an hour to reach Wutai, and in that time, Sephiroth does not speak. The forest is eerily silent around them. The war has ended; the fighting has stopped... but the animals will not surface for some hours yet. Vincent does not doubt that fiends, lured by the scent of blood, will descend upon the village before long. He will be glad of his pits, soon enough.

When they break through the trees, Vincent is possessed by the urge to cover Yuffie's eyes. It is such a foolish thing to think, for surely she was in the midst of this carnage before her mother fled into the depths of the forest. The town is covered by the stench of blood, drowned in it. It is nearly enough to turn even Vincent's stomach.

It has been so long since he has witnessed a scene like this and yet, predictably, it is just not long enough.

Lower Wutai is still smoking. Upper Wutai appears to have avoided the worst of the flames, but the corner of Godo's pagoda is charred and ruined; some incendiary damage, Vincent supposes, was inevitable. Yet despite the abuse to the building, four SOLDIERs are stationed on the steps leading up to the entrance, and he can see more surrounding the building and patrolling the square further along.

The SOLDIERs part respectfully when their general moves to ascend the steps. They do not stop Vincent when he, too, sets foot on them, although the red-cloaked man still holds the Scorpion at ready, and his claw feels thick and old when he twitches it; its joints are clotted with foreign blood.

"Lord Godo is in the last room along this hall. You may deliver his daughter, and you may return to your home." Sephiroth gestures languidly. Vincent's eyes narrow in suspicion, but Sephiroth merely stands, waiting for his orders to be accepted. After a few moments, a vague impatience becomes perceptible in the general.

"I have destroyed the driving force behind our opposition. There is simply no need for further violence against Wutai. My army will pull out shortly after arrangements are secured."

Sephiroth turns and marches back out the way they came, looking irritated, as though Vincent's suspicion has in some way marred his reputation for efficiency.

Vincent watches him go warily, then turns to walk along the wooden floor. It seems a long way, past the enclosed garden to the sliding, panelled door Sephiroth had directed them to. Yuffie's hands tremble beneath his chin, her fingers chilly on his neck, even through the cloth of his collar. It seems to take years, to watch his human hand rise and push aside the door, to watch it fall again.

Lord Kisaragi Godo of Wutai has brushed past fifty with confidence, but it seems as though he has aged swiftly these past few hours, for his face is pale and horribly drawn. His expression as he espies Vincent, this strange, dark, bloodstained man, carrying his daughter toward him, is so raw it is almost painful to look at.

"Yuffie...!"

His hands come up like grasping claws, desperate and frightful, but Yuffie stills in Vincent's grasp. Her tiny voice puffs in his ear, "Daddy," and she slithers from his arms as though her body is nought but cleverly twisted rope in his hands.

Madly, as he watches Godo sink to his knees and silently embrace his wailing daughter, Vincent wonders what his thousandth crane might have done.

* * *

(to be continued)

* * *

(1) - _Shichi-Go-San_ is a Japanese festival literally translated as 'Seven-Five-Three'. On this day, children of these ages visit temples to receive _chitose-ame_ (thousand-year candy) as a symbol of long life and good health. Three-year-olds of both sexes do this, but for five-year-olds it's boys-only, and girls-only for seven-year-olds. _Shichi-Go-San_ is held on November 11, so Yuffie turns eight nine days later anyway. 


	2. Part II

Title: The Difference (2/3)  
Author: Rose Flame  
Theme(s): #14 - craven, democracy, aristocrat  
Pairing/Characters: Yuffie/Vincent, Godo, Cid  
Rating: M

Warnings: AU. War. Adultery. Angst. Death. (It's not as bad as it sounds. There's also candy, and a rock collection.) Also minor loli, I guess.

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.  
Summary: Hojo gives Vincent one last chance to change everything; a chance Vincent, surprisingly, takes.

- - - - - - - - - -

Vincent stays with Godo and his daughter until the treaties are signed. Yuffie falls into disturbed slumber shortly into the procedure, and Godo is forced to hand his girl back to Vincent while he reads and grits his teeth at every concession his village is forced to make.

Vincent sits behind Godo, behind Godo's sweat-streaked advisors, and holds Yuffie in his arms as she whimpers plaintively in her sleep. Even as he speaks a wordless soothing murmur to her and strokes his human fingers over her hair, he cannot take his eyes from the shimmering turquoise 'scale' fastened around Sephiroth's neck.

- - - - - - - - - -

For the first few weeks, Vincent half-expects to see a familiar dark head pop up out of the shrubs, subdued, but still full of that insatiable want to spend time with him. It doesn't happen that way. In fact, it is months before he sees her again, when he has almost given up hope, and he is almost horrified at what he sees.

The whole side of her face is bruised to dark green, swollen and angry with the exercise. She wears a brace for her left shoulder, another for her leg. He stares at her for a few moments in surprise. She puts both hands on her hips, proving that she isn't _that_ hindered by her injuries, and says, "You're supposed to be happy to see me, y'know!"

Vincent straightens quickly. He has been picking up rocks she might like, in her absence, and does not want to be caught adding to her circle. She has expressed dislike of this before. He cannot say why he does it still; she always notices. "Yuffie. It's been a while."

He is suddenly uncertain what to say.

She strolls into the clearing, favouring one leg a little more than the other, and frowns down at her circle. "Vinnie, you messed it all up..." She crouches, wincing a little, and begins to pick up the rocks he has added over the weeks and months she has been missing from his life. He crosses the circle and picks her up; she squeaks and then giggles, settling herself on his smooth golden forearm.

"I had to give you something to do when you came back," he tells her, noticing the change in her girl's body. She has been training fiercely, she must have been; her muscles are far more developed than he remembers. "What did you do to your face?"

"Vinnie!" Yuffie punches him in the chest and that, too, has changed. It throbs at him urgently for a few seconds before settling into the more usual grumble of pain. "Papa's sending me on _missions_ now. Isn't that cool?"

Vincent thinks of the restrained grief-madness that he has seen lurking in Godo's eyes, and wonders. "If that is what you do to yourself on a regular basis, then I do not think you are shaping up to be a very good ninja, Yuffie."

She punches him again, but he knows immediately it was the wrong thing to say; there is sadness in her so deep and aching it is a wonder she has not shattered to dust in his palm. "Hey! This is from_ the pagoda_. I beat old Gorky, too! Heh. You shoulda seen it; he was steamed." Her smile does not quite reach her eyes. Vincent wonders why that should hurt worse than tears.

"Would you like to help me catch fish? Winter is coming."

"Okay! I'll show you my ninja stealth!"

"...just don't fall in," He cannot help but add. Her furious screech of reprimand is somehow reassuring.

- - - - - - - - - -

Less and less, he sees of her.

An afternoon when winter ends, to show him how well she can use materia. He reveals to her the embarrassing and carefully hidden Shield and Restore, and she tries unsuccessfully to steal them from him three times before he threatens to swallow it. She leaves him again with a sullen expression and a vow that she'll get it from him one day. He lets her, with derision, and the promise that she won't.

He works to master the materia in her absence, clearing the forest of fiends for miles around. His claw does not seem to wear, no matter how he uses it. He is not the only one to notice. When Yuffie ventures into the clearing some months later, surprisingly tall and thin for an twelve-year-old, she stares at him pensively for a few minutes and asks, "Are you a god, Vinnie?"

Vincent is bewildered. "What? No."

Yuffie is adamant. "You _must_ be. Or _something_. How come you're always the same?"

As Vincent stares into the distance, wondering how to respond, he knows his face has stilled, grown cold. She isn't used to seeing him that way, any more.

"A long time ago, there was a man... well. Come sit down. This could take some time."

- - - - - - - - - -

He does not see her for the longest time, after that. He has moved from wood to stone, in vicious attempts to make a mark upon the claw that has replaced his left forearm. He is entirely unsuccessful. The claw resists the change as stubbornly as his body resists the tug of time, remaining just as it was that day when he ran from all he thought he loved the most.

He is hunting for good, solid stone to further his attempts when he hears a feminine throat clear itself behind him. He turns, surprised to have been caught unawares, and spies a lovely slip of a lady, beaming at him and holding a Restore and a Shield materia like some people hold cards between her thieving fingertips.

"Told you I'd get it one day, Vinnie."

He checks his gun. He stares at her some more. And then he smiles, for he has not seen her for so long that the sight of her near makes his throat ache. "Yuffie. Well done."

She practically skips down the slight slope toward him, hopping easily over the dozens of roots and treacherous hidden hollows in the dead leaves on the ground. "Guess where I went," she singsongs, and grabs his hands with both of hers. He shakes his head, mystified, and she grins, glad to have him fooled.

"Nibelheim! Well, I went lots of other places, too, but I went to Nibelheim. It's pretty, I guess, but everyone there is sort of weird… were they always really shifty and fake?"

Vincent frowns at her. "You have been to Nibelheim, have you?"

She grins. "Yep. The mountains are really creepy. But - hey, I went _everywhere_! You should see Rocket Town! They've got this real live _space tower_ there! And Gold Saucer - omi_gawd_, Vincent, it's so pretty and colourful! I can hardly go in there without my eyes bugging out of my head!"

Vincent, swept away in the tide of her enthusiasm, manages a smile. "You are indeed a small town girl. Did you visit Midgar?"

Yuffie snorts and turns up her nose at the suggestion. "_No._ Why'd I want to go somewhere like that? I've seen pictures. Midgar's ugly, as well as profane. Leviathan wouldn't be caught _dead_ raining on that place."

"Hmm." Vincent cannot help but agree. "What were you doing, travelling so far a-field?"

Yuffie digs in her pockets and presents him with an odd assortment of items, as well as six or seven brightly glowing materia orbs. He stares at them, and something clicks in his head. "Don't tell me-"

"Aw, c'mon, Vinnie. They won't hardly miss 'em. They're only little baby materia, anyway - you couldn't stop a Nibel _cub_ with these things. But that'll change once I train and master 'em... look, see the little ring of motes, here?" She holds what Vincent thinks is an All materia up to her nose, pointing at the insides like there's something to see other than pale blue crystal.

"No, Yuffie."

She sticks out her tongue. "Your eyes are getting old, Vinnie. This one's about to go up to level two. Do you know how much mastered materia go for overseas?"

And so it goes, and on, and on. By the time she turns for home, Vincent is exhausted with listening to her. But before she leaves him alone in the forest, she hesitates, as though she's forgotten something important.

Uncertainly, she hugs him around the middle. Vincent tilts his head at her, and raises his arms to pull her close. She relaxes into him, as though she belongs there. "I have missed you," he admits. "Be careful, on your adventures."

Yuffie's grip on him tightens as she grins into his torso. "Can't get rid of me that easily, Vinnie. I'm the Great Ninja Yuffie!"

Vincent ruffles her hair fondly as she turns to go. "You are a liar and a thief," he tells her, severity making a valiant play for dominance in his tone. "And you should not stay away so long. How do you expect to rule a village you spend half your life away from?"

Yuffie flicks him the victory sign with her fingers, throwing a confident wink over her shoulder as she slips into the shadows. "Gotta buy it back before I rule it, Vinnie. I'll see you in another couple months."

- - - - - - - - - -

She keeps her appointments surprisingly well, returning every season to astonish him with her gradually budding beauty. (Her height no longer seems to change, though he patiently notches it into his doorframe every time she comes to call. When she turns to see the same height notch, only deeper, she accuses him of not measuring her at all, and socks him solidly in the shoulder. He maintains it barely heals when she's back to punish him for something that is not his fault, again.)

It seems to Vincent that this arrangement suits them both well. He is so desperate for her presence that when she returns he pays her all the attention she firmly believes she is due, drinking down her words and tales of places he remembers so differently, so very differently. The world, it seems, has changed and gone along without him.

One June, she doesn't come back.

He waits, all through July and into August.

In September, he looks up at the night sky and spies a star stranger and brighter than the rest. Uneasiness curdles in his belly, and he finds himself suddenly concerned that his gun, his primary weapon (for which Yuffie occasionally purchases him ammunition), is not in perfect working order.

Over the next three days, it becomes clear to him that it is not a star, it is a meteor, and it will pass alarmingly close to the Planet - if not obliterate it entirely.

On the fifth day, he walks to Wutai.

- - - - - - - - - -

Godo is far older than Vincent remembers, once-black hair now bearing streaks of white at the temples. His eyebrows are outrageous, and set in a concerned scowl, when Vincent arrives unannounced upon his doorstep.

"Where is Yuffie?" Vincent demands.

After a full forty-five seconds of irritated blustering, Godo tells him, "Off risking her fool head, fighting against Sephiroth! What else would you expect from my idiot of a daughter?"

Vincent stares at him carefully and says, "Sephiroth is dead. He died in a reactor accident in Nibelheim."

Godo snorts, as though Vincent is ten years old and retarded. He raises a bony finger to the sky, pointing directly at the meteor, clearly visible even in daylight.

"See that? Meteor. Sephiroth summoned that. It's set to hit Midgar in less than two days."

Vincent's eyes follow Godo's hand, up, up, into the sky where the deadly star blazes. A chill runs down his spine. "Yuffie is fighting the man who summoned that rock. The man who killed her mother. Alone?"

Godo clenches his teeth and shakes his head, old grief surfacing briefly in his eyes.

"Not alone," he says. "She's got a few friends. Odd ones, to be sure, and they were still a little annoyed at her when last I saw them, but they have an airship and a good set of weapons. They're headed to the Crater..."

Vincent shakes his head, and wonders whose materia Yuffie has her eyes set on _now_. His own are fixed still on the meteor.

He realises just how powerful Sephiroth must have grown, and just how little chance Yuffie, for all her brash words and honed ability, probably stands against him.

"Well," Godo says uncomfortably. And again, "Well."

Vincent turns to go, stomach roiling.

"I'll see you in three days."

- - - - - - - - - -

Vincent waits two days. When evening comes, he treks to the west coast; Meteor is so close it seems to work just as well as the sun. Its plummet towards the Planet seems oddly languid, as though it relishes every moment of the seething panic that is undoubted occurring in other settlements. He finds a ledge high above the ocean and sits with his latest find; a sizeable chunk of deep, bloody sandstone cut from the miniature cliffs that hem a curve of the tiny Leviathan offshoot that provides Vincent with water, named by Wutai 'Jormungand'. He chips away at it as the hours pass, eyes fixed upon the Meteor. He will carve the end of the world. And if Yuffie returns, she will have it for her seventeenth birthday.

It is nearly eight hours past noon (though the fire in the sky has lit this hemisphere in seemingly eternal twilight) when the Meteor suddenly seems to leap forward, bearing down on Midgar all those many miles across the ocean, hidden behind mountains of its own. Vincent drops his near-completed chunk of rock and shoots to his feet; he cannot help it. He strains to see all he can of Meteor's passage as it crashes to the ground, and all he can think is, _Yuffie is dead. Surely, my Yuffie must be dead._

He has barely time to recognise the searing ache of hot tears down his cheeks before the ground beneath his feet begins to tremble and shake. The sea surges violently, and he is driven to his knees as the ledge he stands on judders in warning.

No, Vincent realises, one hand flat on the trembling earth. Not sea.

Ribbons of green light twine slowly from the ocean's surface, the trees on the mountain above him, the solid rock beneath his feet. Lifestream arcs into the sky, a slithering conflagration of green lines against a by turns dark and neon orange sky. Vincent turns slightly to watch, mouth only very slightly agape, as what seems like the whole of Leviathan seems to rise into the air, one solid mass of writhing _green_ that squiggles and splurts all across the sky, all across the sky, across the glittering Lifestream-threaded ocean to Midgar, where...

The Meteor slows.

Almost imperceptibly, it slows, and for a moment Vincent believes he must have imagined it. But, no, it is grinding ever closer to a halt as each of those tiny, glittering strands draws towards Midgar, weaving together in an impassable barrier, a shimmering net of lives to be and already been, bearing the monstrous rock to the ground - ever - so - slowly-

The flash of light as the Meteor is evaporated nearly blinds Vincent, the red-cloaked man flinging up his claw as though shards of the thing will reach him all across the ocean. But when the shaking of the ground comes gently, forgivingly to a halt and he gains the courage to look and breathe again, the Meteor is gone.

Vincent stares at the deceptively peaceful night sky, watching a silver-flare like a shooting star pause to perform three loops over what he suspects is Midgar. Seeing it, Vincent feels a shout building in his chest, an elation that is almost too much to bear.

He kicks his sculpture off the shelf into the ocean, stares after it for a moment, as though he had not quite intended that to be the result of his euphoria, and turns for home. He's seen all he needs to. His Yuffie is alive.

- - - - - - - - - -

He sleeps well and deeply; so deeply he does not wake early as he usually does the following morning, even when a certain ninja comes bursting from the trees, yelling at the top of her lungs, "VINNIE! VINNIE, OH GREAT DA CHAO, VINNIE--!"

And, arriving on his doorstep, "Oh, gawd. It's gotta be narcolepsy."

He does not wake as she starts off at a quick dart across the room, then slows abruptly as she nears his sleeping form, taking in the startlingly soft expression on his face. She stands quietly reflective for a moment, crouches next to his pallet. A hand rises hesitantly, as though to smooth his messy hair back from his face.

She shakes her head.

Vincent jerks awake to a young, over-enthusiastic ninja shaking him by the shoulders. His eyes are red pinpoints for the split-second it takes him to identify Yuffie; the claw, already in the air, slows as it nears her shoulder. Yuffie doesn't seem to notice. She continues shaking him with one hand. The other clutches at a flat and shining pendant around her lovely neck.

"Look, look, _look_, Vinnie! I got it back! I got it - Leviathan's Scale!"

Vincent's slowly waking mind dredges up panicked memories of a falling star and a hazy vision of _life_ and _green_. He sits up suddenly - Yuffie squeaks - and encircles her with his arms, tugging her sharply forward so that she is very nearly sitting in his lap. "I thought you must be dead," he tells her numbly. "For a few moments, I thought you were dead. If you ever go off so foolishly like that again, I will track you down and kill you myself."

Yuffie's mouth forms an 'O' of surprise, and then outrage. "Dad _told_ you! That - that - _UGH!_" She crosses her arms and turns suddenly and viciously, though he holds her still. "It was gonna be my _big story_ to tell you, and he _spoiled_ it!"

Vincent's human hand finds its way to the crown of her head, petting it absently, as though she is still just a little girl. He has missed her very much. "Forgive your father, Yuffie. The appearance of the meteor concerned me. I demanded to know your whereabouts." Stubbornly, she remains turned-away, chin raised in defiance. Vincent's lips curve into a gentle, near-invisible smile. "He did not tell me very much. I would still like to hear about it."

Yuffie gives a great sigh, as though she's _only_ doing this because he's _very lucky and very special_, and shifts a little away from his body heat. "You've still got stuff to do, doncha? Food to catch, wood to gather... I'll tell you on the way, 'kay?"

He agrees, though he would rather digest the information quietly. Even bragging about her recent achievements, Yuffie cannot sit still for more than three minutes at a time. As they make their way through the woods, gradually gathering and bundling their finds, she starts to tell the tale of the Great Ninja Yuffie and the Crisis from the Skies.

Her story begins in the middle of nowhere. Vincent finds that oddly fitting.

He listens, intrigued, as she speaks (in true Wutaian style) of a Man with the Hair of a Chocobo, born in Nibelheim, ("Man, that place makes history, huh?") of his Great and Noble Quest to become a SOLDIER, to impress his Secret Love, ("Who was SO not secret to anyone 'cept her. I swear, they're both dumb as rocks, sometimes.") of the Tragedies that Befell him-

She grinds slowly to a halt, there, and his attention to his fishing line (already waning) is broken completely. He glances up at her, curious, and finds her suddenly pensive. "Yuffie?"

"...we killed Hojo."

"..."

She fiddles with her hands, her eyes distant. "I'll... I'll get to that, I guess. I took the deathblow. You were... so angry with him. He did bad things to other people, but you came first, so I took the deathblow for you. I hope that's okay."

Vincent abandons his line completely; his fingers slacken as memory seethes. A soft and bitter smile comes to his lips. "I would have it no other way." Too cowardly to take his own vengeance, he had foisted it upon this girl - no, girl no longer. Not with all she's done.

_Woman_. The notion is strange and appealing.

Yuffie continues, describing the allies she has made. Vincent interrupts her description of Tifa Lockhart ("I have one word for ya, Vinnie: BOOBS.") to comment, "Your father mentioned they were somewhat vexed with you...?"

The ninja looks chagrined. "Yeah, well... I joined up with them for their materia first, didn't I? When we hit Wutai, I was the thiefiest thief who ever thieved, but they caught up with me." She grins slightly. "Saved my butt from this real _creep_, too -- but that's _later_, Vincent! Stop interrupting me!" This is delivered with a splash of water in the direction of his head that surely frightens away every sorry excuse for a meal that Jormungand has to offer. Vincent sighs, and wipes water from his eyes.

"Yes, Yuffie."

- - - - - - - - - -

She comes to him almost every day, for weeks on end, to make up for the time she has lost. It is an embarrassment of riches he hardly feels he deserves.

She claims she has nothing better to do until Cloud packages up all her materia and sends it to her. "Unless he doesn't give it to me within six months," she says thoughtfully. "_Then_ I get to hunt him down, cut off his legs and hit him with them until either they break, or I get bored."

Vincent gives her an exasperated shake of his head, and what might be the slightest of smiles. Yuffie holds up her finger and waggles it at him playfully.

"Don't laugh, Vinnie! I wrote that part into the contract."

- - - - - - - - - -

On the first day of summer, Yuffie surprises him by wearing a dress. No, not a dress - a skirt, he corrects himself, and a vest thrown haphazardly over a bikini top that he hastily turns his eyes from, coughing discreetly. She is definitely a woman now, though she is still dwarfed by the backpack strapped to her slim shoulders.

Yuffie is flushed with the heat and exuberant as only she can be. She grabs him by the arm and begins to tug at his cloak, declaring, "It's _way_ too hot for this, Vinnie. Get it off, get it off, we're going on a picnic."

Vincent blinks, and Yuffie takes advantage of the moment to duck inside his arms and wrestle with the buckles of his cloak. He stares at her dumbly as her nimble fingers make short work of the fastenings. The cloak falls into the dust at his feet. "We are?"

Yuffie's eyes shine. "Yup. I bet you never even saw the beaches down south, and they're the prettiest things; Leviathan weaves in and out of the open ocean all the way down to the southern tip." She laughs. "I have no idea how it does that! But it's still a great place to go for a swim."

"A... swim?"

With no small effort, she swings the backpack in his direction; he catches it one-handed and is surprised once again at its weight. He supposes he shouldn't be. Yuffie has always been far stronger than she appears.

"What are you, retarded?" She demands as he reluctantly shoulders the bag. "_Yes_, a swim. It's hot as Da Chao's belly out here, in case you haven't noticed!"

Vincent has not, really. He knows from the somewhat strained beat of his heart and the way he is sweating that it _is_ uncomfortably warm, but as long as he keeps himself well hydrated, it does not seem to bother him very much.

He has the feeling that no matter his protests, he will be going, anyway. He decides to save himself the effort and frustration, and follow in her footsteps.

It takes them hours, Yuffie cheerfully slaughtering every fiend they come across, before they reach the first bridge. The ninja waltzes across it, cheerfully ignoring the squealing protest of the ropes. Vincent steps onto the thing with hesitance born of not wanting to plummet six hundred feet into the ocean below.

"Yuffie, you do realise that by the time we get back, we're going to be warmer than we started..."

Yuffie shrugs, turning and walking backwards along the bridge, feet unerringly finding the groaning boards despite her nonchalance. "We'll just swim 'til sundown and come back in the dark when it's cooler."

Vincent reflects for the rest of the trip that possibly every other woman in Wutai would have fallen trembling to her knees at the mere _suggestion_ of being outside the village after dark, and that sure as Godo bemoans his fate as the father of such a girl, Michiko's pride in her daughter outshines every star in the sky.

- - - - - - - - - -

He is quite startled when, several weeks later, Yuffie runs into his clearing. She pauses for a moment, glances around as though she had not meant to run this way, and immediately dashes into the woods on the other side of the space. Once the dust from her passage has settled, there is no sign that she has even been there.

Vincent stares to the west after her and, some time later, hears vicious profanity and the effects of a powerful materia on dragons fifteen times Yuffie's size. He sets off after her, unarmed but for the two materia set on his rusting armlet, and some time later finds her blunting her shuriken with painful precision, beating it mercilessly against a large rock. The trees and ground around her bear signs of battle; dragons' blood is sprayed haphazardly along the ground. Vincent approaches uncertainly.

"Yuffie...?"

"Go away, Vincent!" She sounds as though she's trying to strangle herself with her tongue. He reflects that this must be especially difficult for her, since she cannot even curl it. "Just go -" CLANG. "- the hell -"

"Yuffie, what is wrong?"

She turns to him, eyes blazing. "What's _wrong?_ I'll _tell _you what's _wrong_--" But it appears that she cannot, for she stops there and her shoulders heave, as though her fury exhausts her more than simple exercise ever could. He takes a step, he raises his hand, and she bats it down as though he held a knife.

"_I'm getting married._"

She blurts the words so fast and so harshly that they are a stabbing in his chest, a blast of cold air to his face. He stares at her and she stares at him and he opens his mouth and she punches him solidly in the stomach.

She flings her shuriken into the trees and bursts into tears when, infuriatingly, it comes _back._ She drops it point down and punches him again, while he is still gasping and struggling to breathe (he does not bother to defend against her; she will never really hurt him; he always wonders how he knows), and she buries her face against his chest and clutches at him tightly as her shoulders shake.

When he can breathe again, Vincent covers her shoulders with his claw, his hand in her hair, and he holds her gently until the trembling stops.

"This seems quite sudden," he comments, as though he does not much care.

Yuffie laughs, low and bitter, into his chest. "It isn't. I was never good with politics, but it's been going on for months right under my nose - Dad just didn't tell me, thought I'd run away, and now he's coming to stay and _I don't want him, Vincent._"

Gods above, can he really think of nothing to say to her?

"When?" He manages, and she sniffs loudly, decisively, and wipes her eyes. He comes to the realisation that there is mucus on his shirt, and decides that to grimace now would be insensitive and misplaced.

"He's arriving in three days. He's staying for two weeks. We're marrying in spring." She sniffs again, but her fingers loosen slightly as he continues his mechanical stroking of her head. "I bet he's a giant jerkface."

Vincent closes his eyes. "You have lived outside Wutai before, Yuffie. If you are truly so opposed..."

She gives this due consideration, and shakes her head reluctantly. "No, Vincent. I can't leave Wutai to fend for herself. And... the Great Ninja Yuffie doesn't run from anything." She declares more strongly. "Yeah. Just because I don't wanna... doesn't mean I can't." She looks up at him sheepishly. "I guess this must seem pretty silly to you."

Vincent smiles, that tiny, sad curving of lips paler than the undersides of her arms. "No, Yuffie. Not at all."

- - - - - - - - - -

"So?"

"So... he's not all bad," Yuffie is forced to admit, ducking her head. "He's even kinda cute, in an uptight-vassal kind of way. I'm glad he's gone for a while, though. I was so sick of talking about the weather, and craft..."

Vincent throws her an awkward sideways glance. "Your role in the Crisis from the Skies has hardly been thrown into obscurity. Surely you are able to bring more interesting topics of conversation to the fore? Not that flower arranging is anything other than fascinating, of course," he adds with a raised eyebrow. Yuffie muffles her laughter with her hands, then shakes her head.

"Well, it's different for me. The people... really _are_ my people. They _expect_ me to protect them. They celebrate my victory, of course, but it wasn't unexpected. I mean, it's not like they knew, it's just..."

Vincent tosses her the fish he has gutted and descaled, and starts work on another while she washes the remains from the more palatable flesh. "I understand."

Yuffie beams at him gratefully. "Anyway, it's hard to bring up sparring or far-off places in a manner _befitting my station_." She pronounces the words with distaste. "He doesn't want a _Yuffie_ for a wife, y'know, he wants a wallflower, a pretty piece to hang from his arm. Like that's ever going to happen," she scoffs, and begins to wrap the fish in water weed.

Vincent eyes her carefully. "Yuffie," he begins, and pauses to rethink his words. She flicks water at him playfully.

"Just talk, dummy. You don't have to worry about anything, here."

Vincent throws her his second fish, gratified that she thinks so highly of his company, and washes the claw carefully and thoroughly in the swiftly-flowing Jormungand, swollen and satisfied with the recent rains. "Would you prefer to be his wife, and protect Wutai, or be yourself and leave her to stand alone?"

Yuffie cocks her head at him, sadness and pride shining in her eyes.

"You already know the answer to that, Vinnie."

He does, and he does not like it.

- - - - - - - - - -

And so she marries, and for a few months, she disappears entirely from his life once more.

Once or twice, while performing methodical maintenance on his gun, he seriously considers charging into Wutai and threatening the necessary parties until the city's safety and prosperity is assured, and Yuffie never even has to _look_ at anyone she doesn't want to, let alone _marry_ them. But he knows, in his heart of hearts, that although Yuffie might appreciate the final results, she would be angry with him for compromising her independence. And, although he rarely admits it to himself, the very last thing he wants is for Yuffie to be angry with him, no matter how foolishly or briefly.

It does not stop him from going out on afternoons when it is too late, should she arrive, for her to make it back to the village at an appropriate time, and killing fiends to pass the time. It does not stop the irrational, boiling flow of hatred through his limbs when he thinks of the faceless vassal to which his Yuffie has been traded off to, _sold_ to, as though she were a - a _prize Chocobo_.

He twists the gold limb viciously through fiend-flesh, trying to sever the thoughts from his mind, but the violence behind his eyes will not be silenced.

- - - - - - - - - -

It is early one morning when he hears Yuffie's cursing through the trees, much improved (or perhaps worsened) by frequent contact with one Cid Highwind, the owner of the silver airship that has caused her so much grief over the years. He is not sure he approves of her language, though it is an interesting new development, and is more than ready to scold her when she breaks through the trees, heaving a small bundle of planks, with a bright blue tarpaulin slung about her neck and shoulders in a strange imitation of a cloak. When she spots him, she drops the wood, and lets out a satisfied sound as it clatters to the ground.

"Hey, Vincent, get over here and give me a hand!"

He gets over there, and gives her a hand; the only hand he has. She unwraps the tarpaulin, and lays it out flat on the ground, then gestures to it. "Drag the wood onto this half," she orders, sensibly. "I don't want it any wetter than it already is." She leaves him to carry out her orders, vanishing once more into the trees.

He does as she has requested, and by the time it is done she has reappeared, carrying a metal box and a large piece of paper folded like a concertina. She carries these over to her rock circle and sets them down, unfolding the paper and squinting at it determinedly. Vincent stares at the lines on the paper, the Midgarian lettering he can hardly remember how to read, and frowns.

"Yuffie... what is all this?"

She blinks at him, and then grins. "I'm building you a house," she tells him. "A proper one. With a real _toilet_, Vincent, for Leviathan's love."

He says, "You're what?" She waves a hand at him and makes a rude sound between her lips. He stares at her. "Yuffie. You cannot be serious."

She opens her toolbox and removes a large cloth sack. Painstakingly, she begins to gather up all the rocks she has collected over the years, prising them gently out of the earth, and placing them lovingly inside of her makeshift bag. "Sure I am," she tells him brightly, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "This thing's getting ready to fall down on top of you, Vincent." She shoots him a glance over her shoulder, and Vincent is taken-aback at the excitement simmering beneath the calm, grey surface of her eyes. "I'm going to be busy this year. Which means I won't be by to pull you out of the ruins, so I need to make sure there won't _be_ any. Okay?"

Vincent is not the sort of be infected with enthusiasm, but Yuffie's determination will not allow him to simply sit by and watch. He helps her as she drags his few possessions into the light of day, and arranges a sort of lean-to that she tells him will stand up to anything. "Or at least, anything they get in Cosmo Canyon," she muses thoughtfully, taking the frame in her hands and rattling it experimentally. "Our weather's a lot worse than theirs. But this won't take until monsoon season, so it doesn't matter, right?"

Vincent nods, though dubiously, and watches as she strides around the ill-assembled hut that has lasted - with the help of frequent repairs - for more than thirty years, taking measurements and writing with brisk, completely illegible strokes down her arm. For all her preparations, she apparently forgot to bring a note pad.

They spend the afternoon that follows making marker pegs, and dying their tips red with berries and yellow with dust made from rocks. Vincent spreads the plans upon his knees, and is gratified to see that it will be a house little larger than his hut had been. There is a sink and a toilet, with notes beside their pipes indicating that they will run between the village and Jormungand, and room for a pallet and a real table.

"It's going to be on stilts, because it's gotta be gross to have to sleep in mud every time a typhoon comes through, Vincent," she tells him, "And you're going to have to do the waterproofing yourself, I think, but I'll leave you things for that - and the floorboards are coming pre-sealed--"

Vincent shakes his head at her, and traces his finger over lines that will one day be a ceiling. "Who taught you all this?" He marvels at the precise drawing, and Yuffie laughs.

"Reeve, of course!" She says, as though this should have been obvious. "He drew the plans. Cid's going to come in and give me a hand with the plumbing, too, because that's the last thing I want to screw up."

Vincent experiences a moment of heightened awareness - not fear, precisely, or even wariness, but intense _knowledge_ that there will be people coming to his clearing, people that are not Yuffie. The knowledge makes him uncomfortable.

Yuffie seems to notice this, for she looks up from smearing their makeshift dyes into new wood, and reaches for his claw.

"Hey," she says, and he meets her eyes, brighter than steel. "If you really don't want them here, I won't let them come. Just tell me."

He ducks his head, and focuses instead upon the uneven red-purple lines that her fingers are tracing across the bronze back of his claw.

"No," he says. "It's fine."

If she trusts them, he thinks, then there is no reason that he should not trust them, also.

- - - - - - - - - -

Vincent wakes one morning to the less-than-melodious roar of a massive engine above his head, and rolls out of his lean-to with his hair in his eyes and the Scorpion readily at hand - only to watch blankly as a rope ladder unrolls itself to scrape the dusty ground, mere feet from him. He follows the wavering line of the ladder upward, to where it joins with the vast steel side of a great airship.

Yuffie waves at him from the deck, her expression bright, although her complexion seems a little greenish. Beside her stands an older man, dishwater blond and rough around the edges, and he swings himself down onto the ladder like he was born upon this airship.

Cid Highwind, Vincent decides, and tosses the Scorpion back onto his pallet. If he trusts Yuffie, he will not need it.

Highwind hits the ground firmly with both feet from the fifth rung up, and watches Yuffie descend with what is almost a father's eye. Vincent appreciates that Yuffie's friends look out for her where he cannot. When she takes Highwind's daring one step further, and jumps from the tenth rung, the blond man scowls at her.

"Watch what you're doin', kid. The last thing I need's your version of a Fat Chocobo." He raises his arm and waves to a deckhand, and the ladder is tugged slowly but surely upward, out of their sight. Vincent can only watch as Yuffie throws a punch that Cid catches as naturally as breathing, and the girl laughs, delighted, and grins widely at them both.

Vincent is unsure of the precise meaning of the vague, suffocating feeling he experiences, then. Perhaps it is something akin to jealousy, that Yuffie has friends, close friends, other than himself. Perhaps it is merely that vague, panicky feeling that has always overtaken him when he is forced to meet new people.

Yuffie flings her arms wide throws a hug in his direction with gleeful abandon; he catches her, and stares warily at Cid Highwind as the pilot observes with a strange combination of sourness and good nature.

"Vincent, this is Cid Highwind - the chain-smoking old jerk I told you about. That's his _new_ miserable old bucket of bolts, the Sierra. And Cid, this is Vincent."

"Don't listen to a word she tells y'," Cid advises dryly, speaking lazily past his cigarette. "Sierra's fuckin' beautiful, and so was the Highwind."

Vincent feels some of that suffocating sensation begin to dissipate, and his hand ruffles Yuffie's hair almost automatically as she pulls away. "All with a grain of salt, Highwind-san." The name rolls strangely from his tongue, its syllables alien to those he is accustomed to speaking. Cid snorts.

"Don't start with that horse shit," he suggests mildly. "It's Cid."

"Yeah, Vinnie, don't go thinking he deserves any respect," Yuffie puts in brightly, and Cid blows smoke at her pointedly. She aims another punch, and this one impacts solidly with his bicep. "_Don't_," she hisses, and Cid ignores her fervour and shakes his head and turns around to regard their efforts at assembling a real house.

It is not bad, Vincent thinks, but it is not good, either. There is only so much that a short, slight woman and a man with one good arm can accomplish. A level ceiling was not one of them.

"I've gotta go take a look at this river, and where you want your pipes laid," Cid decides briskly. "But if we've got time, I'll give you a hand resettling that corner - otherwise you're gonna have a big hole there when the tiles arrive."

He turns to Yuffie and grins at her. "Shoulda known you'd build a house just as dizzy as you are."

Vincent decides, as Yuffie pokes out her tongue and pulls down her eyelid, and Cid smirks at her over his shoulder, that it might not be so hard to trust this man after all.

- - - - - - - - - -

Yuffie is sitting on his roof, sweating more profusely than the heat really warrants, and setting tiles into place as he passes them up to her. There is only one corner - the final corner - to go on this project. It has taken them nearly two months. Yuffie tells him it's harder, these days, to escape her duties and her arrangements, but she sets aside as many days for him as she possibly can, and he'd better be grateful if he knows what's good for him.

He does, of course, know. And he is, of course, grateful. But there is a change in Yuffie, lately - her legs and arms are rounder, and - although he berates himself for noticing this - her chest seems to have swelled. The light she has always carried inside herself seems to burn with the sweet, soft flame of a candle, now, rather than the all-eclipsing light of her own inner sun. It makes her features gentler, her cheeks colour quickly. She seems to be more beautiful than ever, and he cannot attribute it to anything other than her new husband.

The thought, for reasons he would rather not examine very closely, makes him feel cold and lonely again, although he does not begrudge Yuffie the happiness that Shinichiro is obviously bestowing upon her.

He notices more and more how empty his days seem, when she is not around.

But she is here, today. She is here, and demanding to know what it is he is thinking about, that she's asked, like, a gazillion times for the next tile, and he still hasn't passed it to her. He lifts it, and she grabs for it, and there is a strange, horrified expression in her eyes as, impossibly (she's a ninja she's a ninja how could it why would she), she loses her balance and he has to drop all the tiles to catch her with his arm.

She clings to him for a few breathless seconds, and he tortures himself with images of what could have happened had he not been paying attention, had he tried to catch her with the hand that was not a hand, at the mess of viscera he would even now be trying to replace - he didn't even know where his Restore materia was, right now--

She gives him a shaky laugh, and tells him she's gotta sit down for a little while and have a drink of water. She drains half the large clay jug she'd brought him, years and years ago, and then sits gasping for breath on his porch for a few minutes. She curls her legs up to her chest and breathes calmly for a while, and Vincent is surprised to see her fingers unflex and her hands slip slowly down to her ankles.

He wonders what is wrong with his Yuffie, that she falls asleep without warning in the middle of the day, and loses her balance when she leans too far out over the edge of his rapidly-forming roof.

- - - - - - - - - -

She wakes in the late afternoon and thrusts herself wildly to the edge of the porch to retch helplessly for a few seconds. Vincent has finished the roof by himself; he is by her side in an instant, concern evident even on his calm, cool features. But she waves him off, laughs at the worry in his eyes, and tells him that everything's fine, she just drank her water too fast.

Her eyes are honest and truthful to him, as they have always been, and he cannot help but believe her.

She spends the last hour of their afternoon carefully rearranging her rock garden on either side of his front step, and berates him when he tries to set a flat, white stone down beside a pointier, but still smooth, dark grey one.

"They don't like each other," she reminds him with a serious face. He does, if he puts his mind to it, recall a similar discussion held many years prior.

He sets them down, one on either side of the step, and Yuffie nods in satisfaction before returning to her own handful of interesting pebbles.

She kisses him on the cheek before she leaves, and when he dares show an expression of surprise, tells him it might be some time before she can come again. She has a lot to do. But she is very glad that she could finish his house, and he should enjoy his plumbing in the time being.

- - - - - - - - - -

He does enjoy his plumbing; he has always felt a vague sense of degradation as he wades through the brush to his latest latrine trench, though he knows this is silly. He does enjoy his plumbing.

But it is months before she comes to him again, and it is lonely in his little house in the middle of nowhere. The isolation of the place seems deeper, somehow, with the convention of a house to call his own.

Even the rocks seem strange and unfamiliar to him.

- - - - - - - - - -

(to be continued)

- - - - - - - - - -

A/N: I'm so glad this has been so well-received by everyone, since one of the claims most often used against this pairing is the age difference. Makes me happy to see you're all enjoying it, regardless. Thanks for the support.


	3. Part III

Title: The Difference (3/3)  
Author: Rose Flame  
Theme(s): #14 - craven, democracy, aristocrat  
Pairing/Characters: Yuffie/Vincent  
Rating: M

Warnings: AU. Hair-pulling. Allusions to sex.

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.  
Summary: Hojo gives Vincent one last chance to change everything; a chance Vincent, surprisingly, takes.

* * *

He is outside, dangling his feet so that his bare toes brush the varied surfaces of her carefully arranged rocks, and he hears them coming through the trees. He recognises Yuffie immediately, of course, but she seems to be talking to someone - someone who does not reply, or at least, replies very softly so that he cannot hear. He looks up, out across his clearing, and he frowns. Bringing someone new to meet him, after the lengthy pause between now and her last visit? It is certainly not Cid Highwind. Who? 

He has not long to wonder about this, for Yuffie pushes through the trees, a large wad of cloth held in her arms. The blankets drape down her form, but they cannot hide the way her stomach bulges still, and Vincent's eyes widen with shock and a sudden feeling of immense stupidity, even as she beams at him.

"Vincent! Oh, Vincent, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I just couldn't think, and then they would hardly let me out any more... and here she is, now, anyway. Aren't you, my sweet girl?"

He had come to his feet without realising it, raised his hands towards the babe in her arms without noticing, and he watches his fingers descend as though they belong to someone else. He watches as, stunned and delighted and horrified, they clutch at her forearm - a tiny pink face and grey eyes that could only come from one person, all shining and fresh and new and _so beautiful..._

"Yuffie... I..." He comes to himself with a start, and some of the startled-into-the-light emotion leaves his face. "Congratulations!" He is wordless, and simultaneously indescribably happy, and sad. "She is... perfect. Has she a name?"

Yuffie's eyes are shining fondly when she looks at him, though he is not certain for whom the affection is intended. "Sure does. Kisaragi Ayame, aren't you, kiddo? She'll take after her mother, and prove herself before the Five Gods when she's sixteen, and she'll never back down or give up, will you, kiddo?" She gushes, and then looks down with a small blush. "It's funny, how completely she's taken me over already. She's only two weeks old."

Vincent pats her head. "That is common, I have been told..." he informs her. "And she is well? All limbs present? It will take time to discern whether she has your brain damage," he says, and does not quite dodge the vicious kick she directs at his shins.

"You can't talk to me like that," she declares, laughing. "I'm a mother now. _Gawd._ That'll never stop sounding weird."

Quietly, to himself, he disagrees. He cannot help but feel the title suits her, will always suit her. He recalls from the days of his youth an already ancient woman that everyone called, simply, "Grandma", and wonders with a strange twist to his smile whether Yuffie will attain a similar status as she grows old.

And she will grow old, he realises, trying to keep the sadness from his eyes. She will grow old and she will die, and he will stay here, stay the same.

Yuffie, standing quiet and glowingly happy beside him, turns her head suddenly downward, a shy sort of gesture, and asks, "Would you... like to hold her?" Vincent glances rather helplessly down at his claw.

"I do not want to... harm her," he says, defeatedly. "Perhaps when she is older and does not require as much support..."

But Yuffie makes a rude sort of sound, and lifts Ayame up towards him; his arm jerks automatically out to catch the child, and the ninja nestles her only daughter comfortably in the space between his left arm and his body. She is grinning as Vincent's right hand comes over, hovering, half-terrified, half-mesmerised, at the infant's side. "Don't be stupid, Vinnie. We both know people are pretty tough to kill, even little ones." She laughs as Ayame reaches out and clamps one tiny hand around his finger. "You could drop her off Da Chao and-- well, not _Da Chao_," she amends as Vincent fixes her with a slightly horrified stare. "Point is, she's not gonna take any harm if you hang onto her for a while, now, is she?"

Vincent is not so certain, but then, he has little positive experience with babies. Currently, this one is attempting to dissolve his finger with saliva. Recalling something about bacteria and small children, Vincent makes to pull his hand away, but the grip on his finger is surprisingly strong. Yuffie, noticing what he is trying to do, waves her hand dismissively.

"Aw, let her have it," she says. "You're no dirtier than I am, and how's she meant to develop anti-whatsits and an immune system if she's got nothing around to be immune to?"

"...if you say so, Yuffie..." He relinquishes his finger to the child in his arms. She is not old enough to do more than sit the very tip of it in her mouth, but even that makes Vincent wonder, a little desperately, when exactly the last time he had cleaned his nails had been.

Later, she sits on his porch and sips his weak attempt at tea while he nurses a sleeping Ayame as carefully as though she is his own. Yuffie regales him with detailed accounts of the bloating and swelling and hot flushes and weird foods ("I actually made mama's purple nori! Shake thought I was going insane!"), and how Shinichiro had wanted a boy, she thinks, but she doesn't care because _all_ Wutaian fathers want boys, and she knows girls are just as good and better, anyway. Vincent points out that she is the more powerful person in her marriage, and may do whatever she wishes. Yuffie rolls her eyes in a way that is a little more irritated than fond, and mutters that at least _someone_ understands that.

Ayame stirs, then, and Yuffie sets down her tea immediately. "Snack time," she confesses with a laugh. "It's amazing how hungry she can get." Vincent's hold on the infant becomes instantly less certain as the child begins to wail loudly in demand of sustenance, and Yuffie begins to loosen the sash of her robe, sure and matter-of-fact. Vincent turns his face away so quickly that his neck cracks, and Ayame is momentarily distracted by the hair that flies in her direction.

He learns, then, that there is no idea quite so bad as to give an infant a fistful of his hair. Yuffie dies a slow death, gasping and shaking, her grin so wide that her cheeks must ache, as she tries to persuade her daughter to release him.

"You're lucky she was hungry," her voice sounds from behind his shoulder as he determinedly eyes the distant forest, adamant about giving her privacy. "She just about pulled the hook of Shake's earring through the lobe a few days ago."

"You have obviously trained her well," Vincent says, trying not to concentrate on Ayame's loud, satisfied sucking noises. Yuffie laughs softly and the child makes a fussy sort of sound as her feeding is disrupted.

"Damn straight. What'd I tell you about the beating-the-fivegods thing? Can't do that if you can't rip out an earring or two." There is an unfamiliar, gentle beating sound, and Vincent turns back with a frown to see that Ayame has been flung over Yuffie's shoulder, and that Yuffie has not quite put her breasts away. She doesn't seem at all uncomfortable with this. He focuses determinedly upon her face.

"Please remember your serving maids, when you teach her these things," he asks her. "I remember how hard it was to get blood out of your clothes – and you had only fallen from trees."

Yuffie turns a pretty sort of pink, and he is unsure if it is related to his comment, or her finally noticing how carefully he is refusing to look below her collarbone. "Don't be stupid, Vincent," she mutters. "I've never fallen from a tree in my life."

Vincent smiles, then, and looks back out at the clearing. "Alas, my only witnesses are part of your rock garden."

She smirks. "That's my story, and I'm sticking with it."

* * *

Yuffie brings Ayame with her as often as she can. Vincent is privileged, not enough to witness her first steps, but to be the one who catches her, small and wobbling, at the end of her first thirteen-pace journey. It takes twenty minutes to fully detach her from his hair again, but Yuffie maintains that it was the goal that helped Ayame out. 

Vincent tells her regularly that he would rather the child never walk a step in her life, if she'll only leave his hair alone. They both know he is not serious, but it never seems to stop Yuffie from punching him in the shoulder.

This, to Vincent's private horror, seems to delight Ayame as well.

"What are you teaching her?" He murmurs, as the child gnaws on a small, rubbery imitation of a megaphone. "She'll be a tyrant!"

Yuffie seems to think this is funny. "Vinnie, with you and me, and AVALANCHE behind her, she's destined to be the best damn ruler Wutai ever had."

He frowns. "And… Shinichiro?"

Yuffie frowns back, but this is less thoughtful and more a careful smoothing over of seething anger. "Mmm. Him, too, I guess."

He glances at Ayame, happily bashing the megaphone (which _squeaks_, he is displeased to discover) against his bottom step, and says, "Is something... wrong, Yuffie?"

She gives him a look that he does not think she should know how to make; tired and angry and sad. "He took a mistress."

Vincent's jaw drops, and he cannot quite gain mastery over it again. "He... a... what?"

"Don't make me say it again, Vinnie, it's bad enough the first time," she tells him severely. "I don't... I don't really mind, I mean, I know I'm not exactly the _classical Wutaian beauty_, or anything, but—" She pauses to blink a couple of times, and when that doesn't work, she scowls and squinches her eyes tight shut. "But he oughta think of other people and what it _looks_ like, and – and he oughta think of Ayame, and – and _me_." She turns abruptly away, crossing her arms and glaring at a blameless forest.

Vincent reaches out and touches her shoulder gently – then abandons that approach and tugs her close, instead, knowing she has always appreciated honesty and the forceful expression of opinions. "He is wrong, to be so selfish," he mutters. "And obviously stupid."

Yuffie's voice is thick and muffled with tears, but she laughs anyway and replies, "Well, _obviously_." And she burrows her face into the side of his neck and she stays there for a few minutes, just breathing. "...I'm glad Aya's still little. She doesn't... I mean, if Godo had done that to me and Mama—"

"Your father was an honourable man," Vincent reassures her softly. "They are few and far between. It is unfortunate –" He stops, there, for it is too calm, too soft, too distant. "I feel badly, that this has happened to you. You deserve so much better."

Yuffie laughs against his neck again and pulls back, fingers twirled loosely in his hair. "A killer and a thief deserves a good husband?" She teases him, and tugs on the lock fondly. He stops the motion sternly, catches her eyes.

"You are hardly a killer," he disagrees with complete confidence, "And Kisaragi Yuffie deserves a husband devoted beyond compare." And then, almost impulsively – and it horrifies him, the ease with which it slips out - "I would take care of him, if you wished."

Yuffie, to her credit, is not horrified by the question. She takes it for what it is; a question as to whether this transgression requires vengeance, and she shakes her head. "Cid and Barret already asked," she replies. "It's not his fault he wanted something different. I wanted something different, too. Want," she amends thoughtfully.

Vincent cannot bring himself to ask what she means by that, and then she is gone to jokingly scold her daughter for picking apart the rock garden. She sweeps up her daughter and spins the child around, the both of them laughing as Yuffie sinks to the ground, hopelessly dizzy.

Ayame offers him a rock (the dark, pointed one that apparently guards the left-hand side of his path), large eyes childishly pleased to be able to share this gift with him. He takes it from her, waits the obligatory three seconds it takes for her to want it again, and then hands it back to her gently.

Yuffie smiles at him from behind her daughter, cradling the girl close and marvelling aloud over the rock, and how, "That was always Vincent's _favourite_, y'know, so we'd better put it back!"

She places it underneath his bottom step, right in the middle, and collects the white rock with a smile from the right-hand side of the path, to sit beside it.

"I thought they didn't like each other?" He reminds her with a smirk. She rolls her eyes and hefts her daughter on one hip, striding away with the sunlight.

"I think they just needed a little time."

* * *

Time is something Vincent has in great abundance. He dedicates it, now, to finding pigment. Ayame is not old enough to appreciate colourless toys, as Yuffie was when they first met. He has a rock – for which he has erected a crude structure reminiscent of his first dwelling – on which he has ground an assortment of colours. She likes green best. He has trouble making it bright enough for her.

On days when Ayame is left with Yuffie's retainers, Yuffie is unhelpful in this regard. _She_ enjoys brighter colours like yellow and orange, and still has few qualms about smearing them where she perhaps should not. (Vincent had learned to make his pigments out of less indelible materials after he spent three weeks with a blue star on his left cheek.)

She is playing with a dark, oddly vibrant red when she comments, "Y'know, I think this might be the exact colour of your eyes. What'd you make it out of?"

"Blood," he tells her seriously, and she crinkles her eyes at him in a grin. "Berries," he answers more truthfully. "To the south, there is..."

"Oh, right down the bottom of that little valley?" Yuffie asks, surprised. "I didn't know you went that far."

Vincent supposes he should not be so surprised every time she demonstrates a detailed knowledge of her homeland.

"Those taste pretty good, y'know," she tells him, and sticks red, sticky fingers in her mouth before he can stop her. She shrugs. "A little like dirt, with your paint-stuff in it, but still okay." She holds out one hand, still smearing the stuff on her lips and tongue with the other, and smiles at him with a newly made-up mouth. "Try it, Vinnie."

He frowns at her and at the paint still smeared on his rock palette. "I didn't realise they retained flavour after I'd dried and ground them," he comments, not deigning to taste the stuff himself. "That would explain the ants."

Yuffie looks disgruntled at that, and examines the paint on her fingers critically for any sign of ants in it. Finding none, she shrugs and sticks them into her mouth, sucking at them meditatively. Vincent quirks a smile. "I thought I was going to try that?"

Yuffie shrugs and clambers to her feet. Without warning, she presses herself close, tugging him down with pink-stained fingers to kiss him, lick his lips. He jerks backward – or tries to. Her fingers hold his collar tight, her eyes serious as they watch him.

"Yuffie—"

"Try it, Vincent," she says flatly. Obediently, he finds himself tentatively licking his lips, tasting not the tartness of the berries but the clear sweetness of her. He stares, his collar still gripped in iron fingers, feeling his heart pound. Yuffie's fingers gentle, smoothing themselves against the nape of his neck. He feels himself begin to shiver.

"Yuffie," he tries again, voice low and pleading. "You do not—"

Her fingers move to stroke his cheeks, dark strands of hair sticking to the remnants of juice that coat their tips. "Don't tell me what I do or don't want, Vincent," she murmurs. "I know – truth be told, I've known for years, now. What I want." Closer, softer. "Who I want."

He shuts his eyes to guard against temptation and he opens his mouth to argue, _Shinichiro, Ayame, your father would--_

Thought flees when she kisses him again.

"They don't care, Vincent," she whispers. "By Wutaian law, I can take a consort – anyone I want. I know you don't want that." It is true; the thought, though newly awakened, terrifies him. "But... but I thought, I hoped..."

She lets go of him, then, sticky fingers sliding down his collar to drop again by her sides. She's frowning a little, as though an unexpected knot has formed in a rope she was busily coiling. "I guess I had this crazy idea you might want _something_."

This is too much; she has been pushed away too often for him to let that go. "I do," he blurts throatily, "I do. But, I—Yuffie, you should be sure about—"

He can't talk any more after that, because Yuffie is smiling and her hands are on his cheeks and it's all he has wanted his whole life, he thinks, to be held and kissed so truthfully.

* * *

It makes him nervous, sometimes, that the whole world can see them. They have no night times, no forgiving shadows. They dwell in a bright circle of trees and rocks and sunlight, and sometimes rushing river water, when they visit Jormungand.

She bathes with him sometimes. There are silvering stretch marks on her belly, on her breasts and thighs. She giggles when he touches them, lifts her cupped hands to dribble water through his hair. There are lines that stay in her face when she stops smiling.

She looks older than he does, and it terrifies him.

He tells her this exactly once.

She slips – a rare occurrence – and comes crashing to the ground, and spends several moments with her face all scrunched up, gasping with the pain. He drops immediately down beside her, good hand rubbing soothing circles until the harshest of the lines in her face go away and she squints at him with tears still in her eyes.

"That hurt," she admits, shifting herself carefully upright.

"Lady Wutai should be more careful," he tells her, helping her to her feet. He notices more clearly, then, the care with which she holds herself, these days. He notices the paler strands of hair that are not self-inflicted – or inflicted by a horrendous salon in Midgar, when she visits Cloud and Tifa, ostensibly as diplomat - that are becoming ever more populous as the years go by. She seems to understand the sudden horror in his eyes, for she smirks at him and her eyes still gleam with beguiling youth, sharp and grey and shining.

"I'm not dead yet, Vincent Valentine," she tells him, and he swallows harshly around a sudden lump, blinks against the stinging tears.

"Not yet," he repeats numbly, and is startled once again by the searing trail the tears carve down his cheeks. Yuffie looks as surprised as he is, touching his face, tugging him close and tightening her arms about his shoulders.

"Hey, now," she soothes, in much the same way she has reassured Ayame for the countless falls and bruises; the girl is not as graceful as her mother. "Not for a long time, yet, Vincent."

"I don't want," he tells her, though his voice is muffled and he cannot seem to form coherent sentences. "_Ever_."

She strokes his hair and hums to him softly, a sad smile on her face. "Hey, now," she repeats. "I promised Aeris, y'know, and I still owe her a ribbon from the time I used hers to tie in Red's mane and he ate it, because _apparently_ that was _my_ fault. I've gotta go on ahead to meet her, and make sure Cloud doesn't hit on her any more, 'cause Tifa'd bring him back and kill him _twice_." She pauses reflectively. "And then we've gotta have a hot threesome, I think, 'cause I promised Reno, once, and did I tell you he got himself killed in Junon, trying to impress some chick in a bar? Stuck his tongue in a blender or a wall socket or something, I dunno, he was playing pool, but it was really neat in a grossness kind of way; Reeve showed me the pictures—"

He's laughing and crying now, and though it's something she does often, he's never realised just how much that odd combination hurts in the back of his throat and the pit of his stomach.

"Only you," he chokes out, "Would think an accidental death was _neat_."

She grins at him and ruffles his hair. "You're just still sore from the time I tried to install a blender on your arm," she accuses.

"I love you," he tells her softly, because he feels she ought to know, and Yuffie smiles at him and smoothes out his hair again, as though in apology for the tousling.

"Of course you do," she tells him. "And it's gonna stay that way, even if I somehow manage to electrocute myself over a pool table." She chuckles and shakes her head. "You know what, I don't think, after that, he even deserves the porn."

Which makes Vincent wonder what exactly he had done to deserve it in the first place, but some things, he feels, he will never be quite ready to receive an answer to.

* * *

Vincent knows something is wrong when he wakes to the low, throbbing chime of the great bell in the ground beneath him. He is unsurprised, but worried, when neither Ayame nor Yuffie spring from the trees to hug his legs or drag him to the ground, respectively. He smells smoke, but not wood smoke – spice smoke; incense. When he stands on his roof, he can see no trace of fire on Da Chao.

A death, then.

The great bell chimes four times more – at midday and at dusk. It wakes him at midnight, a deep reverberation that leaves his chest aching, and again at the dawn of the following day.

He sits on the bottom step and peers between his heels at the white rock and the black rock until Ayame and Yuffie wade slowly from the trees' shadows, and then he knows it is Shinichiro.

For an instant, he is angry; then, ashamed.

Yuffie walks straight into Vincent's arms and he holds them both; the good hand curled around the back of Ayame's head as she burrows wetly into his collar, the bad arm tight around a still, cool Yuffie's waist.

He doesn't ask and she doesn't tell, but they stand all there together as the sun sinks into the horizon.

* * *

They stay with him that night. Yuffie has long since installed a cot for her daughter. She claims she will sleep on the floor, knowing he will give the bed to her anyway. He does.

Vincent wakes in the night, not to the sounds of Ayame's tears, but to Yuffie's careful footsteps by his head. He grabs her ankle before he realises, but she kicks him off impatiently; not while her daughter is crying. It takes him a moment to orient himself, takes him a moment to roll to his feet and follow Yuffie to the cot, where she has scooped Ayame into her arms, to stroke the back of that tiny head and press the child soothingly into herself.

"Go back to sleep," he murmurs. "I'll take care of her."

"Will you?" Her voice is distant, scratchy with sleep, so drowned by the torrent of sound from her daughter that the first time, he can barely hear the words. "Will you really, Vincent?"

He frowns down at her, holds out his arms, thinking in her terms as they have always been: the moment. "Of course." But she turns to him, eyes steely in the night, and next to the rumpled mess of her hair, the gravity in her face is enough to make him pause.

"She's old enough to remember you now, Vincent," she reminds him. "Ayame will remember you, and remember her father, and eventually she'll think to wonder why she spent so much time with you. And I—I won't care." Tears again in her eyes, steel and water. "I won't care, but she might, and you might. And if you step in, it has to be for always, Vincent. I don't, I can't do half-measures any more."

Vincent stares at Ayame, bundled in her mother's arms and gulping huge breaths past the tears, stares at the lines that have crept in around Yuffie's mouth, around her eyes over the years, and though he can already feel his heart breaking, although he already knows that losing her again will all but kill him, the decision she raises is really no decision at all.

"Of course." He takes the child from her, snorts gently as Ayame's left hand curls immediately around a hank of hair, and leans to kiss Yuffie's forehead. "Go back to sleep," he tells her again, and basks in the glow of her affection when he repeats, "I'll take care of her."

* * *

There are five bells for Yuffie when she dies, and one of them is rightfully Ayame's, having bested her mother in the Temple of Five Mighty Gods at the age of fourteen. She is twenty-three now, and she knows that Vincent needs no reminding of his promise, but she goes to him anyway and she gives him her mother's mother's Leviathan necklace because Wutai's economy is secure enough now that one piece of materia doesn't matter much to her, but she knows it matters to him.

Lots of strange things matter to Vincent now that her mother is gone. Rocks. Her mother's rock garden matters to him; matters enough that she helps him build a low wall about it and set it with resin. The necklace goes into the middle, right underneath the floor of Vincent's house – they bellied in together one day and decided just how the chain would go; Vincent may or may not have given birth to invisible kittens when he accidentally toed one of her mother's rocks out of the way.

He will not come to the city unless she is meeting with people so important and intimidating that she needs his actual support, which is to say he rarely comes to the city at all, but when he does he sits behind her as one of her retainers, and none of the visiting dignitaries ever suggest he is not the fifth god. His blood runs with their blood now, and he will be the best of retainers for her daughters and her daughters' daughters, and they will never be afraid of fire, nor of red eyes in the night.

They will never be afraid to be alone, because they never will be.

* * *

A/N: Thankyou to everyone who waited patiently for the near-year between the middle and the end – I'm sorry it took so long, and I have no excuse but laziness and being kidnapped multiple times by a variety of fandoms. I am still flabbergasted that all this came from a three-word prompt, and suspect I always will be. 


End file.
